


Wake Me Up

by missroserose



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Billy Hargrove Lives, Complex Character Dynamics, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gay Billy Hargrove, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Road Trips, dumb idiot boys having dumb idiot arguments, implied suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:22:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 25,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28144551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missroserose/pseuds/missroserose
Summary: June, 1986.  Robin Buckley is comfortable.  She has a steady job at the video store.  A best friend she would die for.  A music collection that'd be the envy of the majority of teens east of the Mississippi.  It's not a glamorous life, but it has its pleasures.Then Steve asks her to come on a road trip.The catch:  Billy Hargrove is coming with them.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 54
Kudos: 58
Collections: Harringrove Holiday Exchange 2020





	1. grey skies outta my way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Highsmith (quimtessence)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quimtessence/gifts).



> Highsmith—
> 
> for reasons that will become clear in the near future, I was absolutely determined to write you an amazing story. I'm not certain I can say, for sure, that I succeeded, but I'm at least somewhat pleased at how it came out—all 25,000+ words of it. Its creation was turbulent, with moments of sublime glory and moments of glorious despair. But! It all turned out well in the end. 
> 
> We'll have to hope the same holds true for our beloved band of three.
> 
> —your creator
> 
> P.S. As you might guess from the chapter titles, there is a playlist. But as we've all been sworn to secrecy as to the provenances of our respective works, you'll have to wait until New Year's for it. 🎁 🎶
> 
> **ETA 1/1/2021:** Happy New Year, Highsmith! As promised, [here's the playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2y0URS5XAJyfMOmJGDwLHd?si=Qf8fAgZJRLS2nV8mvZu-WQ)—featuring both Robin's mental mixtape for their trip, and my own for writing it. I hope you enjoy both the playlist and the story at least a fraction as much as I enjoyed making them for you. <3 <3

“Here we go,” Steve says, rolling down his window. “Is everyone ready?”

In answer, Robin and Billy roll down their windows—Billy in the passenger seat, Robin in the back. Steve hits the gas and the sign rears up by the highway—NOW LEAVING HAWKINS, COME BACK SOON—and they give a collective whoop as they pass it. Billy sticks his arm out, flips the sign the bird; Robin hits the shutter on the secondhand point-and-shoot she’d found at Hawkins’ lone thrift store, capturing the arm and the sign in the frame at once. “Later, Hawkins!” Steve yells as they cross the invisible line of the border.

“Thanks for nothing,” Billy grunts as he pulls his arm back in, settles into his seat.

Robin cranks the camera’s wheel, winds the film forward. “You can say that again,” she agrees. There’s a knot in her chest, a complex set of feelings about a place where she grew up, a place she grew too big for, a place that turned out to be far bigger and stranger than she ever thought possible—but it’s too tightly pulled for her to even hope to untangle it right now.

Maybe some time away will help.

She looks over at Billy. “Excited to get back home for a visit?” 

“Not really.” Billy shifts a little, as if thinking. “But pretty boy here’d already bought the concert tickets, so.”

Steve punches him in the arm without looking away from the road. “Shut up. You love Van Halen.”

“Whatever.” Billy kicks his booted feet up onto the dashboard, intentionally (Robin suspects) getting a smear of mud on the wood trim. “It’ll beat being poked and prodded at by Uncle Sam in exchange for my weekly stipend, anyway.”

"Just wait. You're not gonna be stuck in Hawkins forever." Steve nods, fixes his sunglasses more firmly on his face. "We're way too big for that town. Soon we're gonna be heading past that sign for the last time."

Robin sits back, tries to ignore the way Steve's talk of the future pulls that knot painfully tight. "Yeah, sure," she says. "Take it one step at a time, dingus. Get us to California and back in one piece, that'll be a good start."

"Hell, we can skip California entirely," Billy puts in. "Catch 'em in Colorado or something."

"It's a _sold out tour,"_ Steve pronounces. "C'mon, live a little. We've got a car, the open road, nearly two weeks to ourselves. It’s gonna be the trip of a lifetime."

Robin scoots into the middle seat and leans forward on the center console. Looks from Steve to Billy and back. “All right, I'll bite. Do we have any actual plans for this ‘trip of a lifetime’, other than ‘drive west’?” 

“Sure we do,” Steve says, sticking a hand out the window to feel the wind. “Drive west _really fast.”_

“ _Really fast_ in a fuckin’ family sedan.” Billy snickers. “You’re lucky, Harrington. If I still had my Camaro I'd eat your lunch all the way there.”

“I’ll have you know that the BMW is the ultimate driving machine,” Steve says, primly. “One and three-quarter tons of precision German engineering. Also—” he grins—”it has luxury features. Like a sunroof. And working seatbelts. And functioning shocks—”

“Right,” Robin interrupts, before Billy can respond. “No plans. I’ll get an atlas or something when we stop at a gas station.” 

“Kansas City is about eight hours away,” Billy suggests. “If your _ultimate driving machine_ can go a full day without getting her mirrors waxed.”

“Oh my god, you don’t wax the _mirrors_ , Hargrove, no wonder you drove like that—”

Robin gives up. Scoots back. Swings her legs up along the backseat, looks out the rear window. Hawkins has already disappeared into the forest; there’s little outside of the car other than trees, marked by an occasional private drive, anonymous numbered mailboxes the only sign of human habitation. She’d imagined, in the past, what it’d be like to have a vacation home out here, somewhere she could live as a wealthy shut-in with a score of musical instruments and a few cats. Let the gossips in Hawkins make whatever they wanted of her—

Her thoughts are interrupted by the creak of a cassette case, the clatter of a tape going into the player. She barely has time for her thoroughly conditioned wince response before the finger-snaps and synths are starting, and only a few measures more until George Michael is informing her that she puts the boom-boom into his heart.

Her glance flicks over to Billy; judging by his expression, he wasn’t aware of Steve’s current obsession with Wham!, nor his demented refusal to acknowledge that, its bestselling status and dubious merits aside, _Make It Big_ it is definitely not an album that should be played _five times_ in a day. Maybe Steve kept him in the dark intentionally, all the better to ambush him when they’re trapped in a car together.

“Harrington. Are you kidding me right now.” Billy’s tone is flat, as if pure denial will be enough to quiet the aggressively cheerful major thirds rising from the speakers. Mentally, Robin applauds Steve’s deviousness; the look of pure horror on Billy’s face is almost entertaining enough to justify having to listen to Wham!. Again.

“Driver gets first album pick.” Steve’s voice is every bit as sunny as the music.

“You’re going to make me listen to this shit for _half an hour?”_ Billy’s gone from horror to disgust to pure disbelief; there’s something almost comical about the way he looks helplessly over at Steve.

“Thirty-eight minutes, actually. And two seconds.” Robin leans forward again, rests her elbows on the center console and her chin in her hands. “Ask me how I know.”

Billy’s looking from her earnest expression to Steve’s grin, still looking half-convinced this is a prank. “I was wrong,” he says, shaking his head. “I thought they brought me back. But I must’ve died, because this is Hell.”

Steve doesn’t answer, only glances back at Robin for a second, his grin having taken on a conspiratorial edge. Having long since surrendered on the point of his music taste, she chimes in with him—“Wake me up before you go-go, don’t leave me hanging on like a yo-yo—wake me up before you go-go, I don’t wanna miss it when you hit that high—“ Her contribution dissolves into laughter at the way Billy makes a disgusted noise and slumps back into the seat, arms crossed.

Later, probably around the time the saxophone solo from “Careless Whisper” starts slithering through her eardrums, she’ll pull out her Walkman, maybe see if she can drown it out with Gershwin—”Rhapsody in Blue” feels like good luck for a journey, a musical beckoning towards an exciting future. But for the moment, she’s appreciating every ounce of unexpected entertainment she’s getting out of Steve's terrible, terrible taste in music.


	2. drive hard I’m callin’ all the shots

The hotel room is more than a little dingy and smells like dog pee, but it has two beds and a functioning air conditioner, and for the moment, that’s all that matters. The brightly-printed polyester comforter is pleasantly dry beneath Robin’s skin after the mugginess of a car full of people. She’s spread out on her belly with her brochures and newly-purchased atlas, taking up the entire bed ( _I’m the only girl, so that means you two are sharing,_ she’d said, cheerfully relishing the awkward glances this caused between the two boys), when Billy gets back with dinner. 

“So, is there anything you two want to do while we’re in town? We’ve got a good week before the concert, we can hang around and check stuff out before we leave.” At the lack of response, Robin glances over to where Steve is dozing off on the other bed. “Hey Gramps,” she says, reaching over and jiggling the frame. “When you’re done resting your eyes, dinner’s here.”

Steve blinks his eyes open. “Whuzza?”

Billy holds up the grease-spotted paper bags, “Wendy’s” logo prominently displayed. “Pretty boy. Food time.” 

“What he said.” Robin chucks a thumb towards Billy, tries not to eye the bags in his hand like a starving panther. “What about you? Anything you want to do while we’re here?”

“Nah. Came through here on the way east. Whole lot of nothing in this city.” Billy drops a bag next to Robin. “Buckley. Double bacon cheeseburger with fries.”

She punches his leg as he moves past. “For the love of God, don’t call me that. It makes me sound like a chemistry teacher.” She pulls out the burger, tears into the foil wrapper, takes a big bite. Savors the slightly transgressive feeling of eating dinner in bed, no dining room or table in sight. “Anyway,” she says, mouth full, “maybe there’s not much, but it’s still a city.”

“Yeah, but remember, it’s _Kansas_ City. You ever hear of anything interesting happening in Kansas? It’s flat and boring wherever you go.” Billy throws himself on the bed opposite, tosses the second bag down next to Steve. “Chicken club sandwich with side salad for the girl.” 

“There’s a zoo.” Steve’s voice is a little muzzy, but he picks up the food with enthusiasm. “An art museum. An amusement park, I think.”

Billy snorts. “So you’re not just a girl, you’re an eleven year old.” 

Steve accepts the jibe with a yawn and a good-natured shrug. “Was the last time I was here. Eleven, I mean.” Almost half his chicken sandwich disappears in one bite.

Billy shrugs, unwrapping his own burger. “I still say the sooner we get some mountains behind us, the better.”

Robin pulls over the atlas, doing her best to minimize the ketchup smears. Walks her fingers an approximate distance along the line of I-70. “If it’s mountains you’re looking for, we could head up to Denver. That’s about a day’s drive.” Something niggles at the back of her mind, and she flips through a few brochures, finds one featuring full-color photos of an outdoor concert venue. “Red Rocks Amphitheatre is out there. It’s supposed to be one of the most gorgeous music venues in the country.” She scans the list of acts and dates. “Drat. Nobody’s playing, but we could go look around.”

“Huh. Maybe. I read an article about them in _Rolling Stone_ a while back.” Billy stuffs his mouth with burger, chews for a moment, swallows. “They had a ban on rock concerts for a while,” he continues, mouth still half full. “Said they were too rowdy.”

“A ban on rock concerts?” Steve gives them a confused look. “How could they do that?” He looks from Robin’s nonplussed expression to Billy’s blank one, lets the silence draw out for a moment more before breaking out into a grin. “It’s a _rock_ venue.”

Robin closes her eyes and groans, only to hear a yelp and the sounds of a playful slapfight coming from the other bed. “Boys,” she mutters, before returning to her brochures. “We should pick a few more things to see,” she says, a little louder, as things escalate. "Since we're taking a road trip and all." She looks up as Steve attempts to attack Billy’s hamburger with his mouth, Jaws-style, hampered by the arm Billy's holding up. “Grand Canyon maybe?”

“Saw that on the way east too. It’s a big hole in the ground.” Billy, having wrestled Steve off his lap, beats a tactical retreat. Comes over and uses his free hand to root through the pamphlets. “What, nothing for Vegas?”

Robin raises her eyebrows up at him. “I thought Vegas was for people with money.”

“There’s cheap hotels, and lots of stuff you can see on the Strip. Not to mention the casinos.” Billy grins. “I’ve always wanted to put everything on red.”

“That’s probably a lot easier when you don’t have much to start with,” Robin observes dryly. “Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure you have to be twenty-one to gamble.” 

The grin only grows more wolfish. “C’mon, Buck—Robs. This is your first time out of Hawkins in how long? You really telling me you didn't bring a fake ID?”

“I never said that.” Robin keeps her tone mild, distracts from what feels like a dangerous line of conversation. “Okay, Vegas is an idea. Steve, anything you want to do?”

Steve looks up, mouth full, and swallows. “I dunno. In school I used to stare at the map of the U.S. sometimes, and think how cool it’d be to visit that spot where four states all meet up. Stand with each foot in two different states, maybe.”

Robin stares at him a moment, as if waiting for the punchline to land. When it doesn’t, she actually laughs. “You are such a dingus.”

“Hey, I was in seventh grade, okay? There wasn’t much else to do in class.”

Billy snorts. “S’why I was never _in_ class,” he mutters around a mouthful of burger, but Robin checks the atlas. 

“Kansas City to Denver is about a day. Denver to Four Corners is about a day. Four Corners to Las Vegas is about a day. We could stay in Vegas for an extra day, depending—how long are we staying in San Diego?"

"Just the night," Billy says, at the same time Steve suggests "Four or five days?"

An awkward silence follows as the two of them glance at each other.

Robin knows she should stay out of this; even she can smell the argument in the making. But it's been a long damn day and her patience is thin. "You didn't talk about this beforehand?"

"I didn't have time to talk about it. Pretty boy here just showed up at my door with tickets, told me I was coming." Billy crosses his arms. "I don't even care about Van Halen."

Steve bumps his shoulder with a fist, maybe a little more than strictly playfully. "You were the one who gave me their album in the first place, asshole."

"They're gateway metal. _Teenybopper_ metal." Billy couldn't sound more disgusted if Steve had asked him to try Jazzercise. "I only gave it to you because you couldn't handle the real shit."

"Just because I thought Rob Halford sounded like he was singing with his balls stuck on a barbed wire fence—" Steve cuts off, making an exasperated noise. "I thought you were desperate to get out of Hawkins."

"Maybe, but nobody asked _you_ to waltz in and fix it for me—"

"Hey, asshole." Robin swings her legs off the bed and stands up, dusting crumbs off the bedspread, "Maybe you should say thank-you to your friend who bought you concert tickets and is driving your ass across the country?" She straightens. "Y'know, like a normal human being—"

Billy whirls, and his eyes snap to hers. Robin flinches—for a moment, she thinks he's going to take a swing at her. He swallows, hard, but manages to keep his temper under control. "This isn't your fucking business, Buckley."

"Right." Robin realizes she's holding up her hands. Backs away, slowly. "I'm going to get some ice." She picks up the bucket and leaves, letting the door shut behind her; a moment later, the two of them are at it again, voices only slightly muffled. "Why the fuck would I want to stay almost a week? I used to live there, I've done all the dumb tourist shit—" "If you didn't want to come, Hargrove, you could've said no, nobody's forcing you—"

Finally she's far enough down the hall for their voices to fade into the background noise of TV soundtracks and Coke machine hums and, in one spot, a guitar being strummed. She descends the stairs to the first floor and eventually discovers an ancient ice machine in an alcove off of the lobby. It wheezes and clanks like a phlegmatic locomotive, but it spits out a few cubes at a time. Enough to give her pretext some semblance of credibility.

So. Billy isn't any keener on this trip than she is. That figures. But...why is Steve so attached to it? She hasn't quite put that one together—he likes Van Halen, sure, but not enough to cross half the country for it. Why San Diego? Why them? Why now?

Robin takes a moment to peruse the hot beverage options in the nearby vending machine—hot chocolate that probably tastes like water with a brown crayon dipped in it, hot coffee that probably tastes like crayon-water with a little stomach acid for flavor—but eventually she sighs and turns back, hoping that the boys have finished their argument and they can all go back to pretending that things are fine. They're Midwesterners, after all. It's what they do best.

Upon her return, she discovers Steve on the bed, flipping through a few of the brochures she'd gathered, wearing a pitch-perfect _what? everything's cool_ posture. "Hey," he says, voice breezy as a summer day in a cornfield. "Billy went to go work out."

She's tempted—very tempted—to shrug, to make some vague humming sound of acknowledgement, to put on her Walkman and listen to Joan Jett and pretend she's anywhere else. But. 

It's Steve.

She gives him a look.

To the credit of his upbringing, he manages to hold the posture for a few beats more before it completely wilts under her expression. She holds it for an extra second or two, just to make the point, then relents. Grabs her wallet and shoves it in her pocket. "Come on."

"Where are we going?"

"I've been stuck in the car all day. I'm going to stretch my legs," she says. "And _you're_ going to tell me what's eating you."

To her surprise, Steve matches her look. "I will if you will."

 _Aside from being trapped in a small space with two bickering dinguses all day?_ Robin almost says it aloud. But...no. Steve's her best friend, and he deserves the truth. So she nods. "Deal."


	3. it's not my home, it's their home

They aren’t precisely in a walking-friendly part of town, but in the way of suburban natives, they find the few irregular footpaths cut between the bushes that separate the string of various chain hotels and chain restaurants. The parking lots are quiet, asphalt slowly radiating the heat of the day; the sun has only just set, and the bright twilight feels appropriate, liminal light highlighting a liminal path. Flesh-and-blood people existing in a concrete-and-asphalt world not quite designed for them. 

Eventually, they encounter an outdoor strip mall big enough to do a circuit around. Pharmacy, grocery store, diner, bookstore, hairdresser, music store. Robin glances longingly at a display for _The Queen Is Dead_ in the window as they pass by that last, but she’s trying to save—concepts like “moving out” and “adult life” all swirl before her, ominous and looming and frustratingly formless.

Towards the far end of the concrete strip, off the side of the building, there’s an incongruous bench. Splintered sun-bleached wood sitting forlornly by the pebbled stucco wall, matching combined trash-can-and-ashtray standing guard next to it—like a bus stop from the more properly urban section of town got lost. Robin plops down, savors the space to sprawl; she takes a moment to admire the view of…well, of more bushes, and traffic signals, and off in the distance, a water tower. Steve slumps next to her, pulls a pack of cigarettes out from his vest pocket. Robin cocks an eyebrow, but decides not to comment. There's enough on their plate with this conversation, already.

A few flicks of the lighter, a drag, an exhale. To her surprise, he opens the conversation. “So, you want to go first?”

“About what?” It’s a stalling tactic, more than anything. She could put him off, but Steve knows her too well by now to let it go entirely.

“What’s eating at you? You’ve been prickly lately. Well.” He makes a vague gesture with the hand holding the cigarette. “More than usual. I thought it was Hawkins. Thought we were all just stir-crazy, with summer here.”

“Maybe a bit.” Robin rolls a few versions of the story around in her mind, decides to leave it unvarnished. “You remember last month, when I hung out with Tammy Thompson a few times?”

Steve snorts. “Like every weekend. I was starting to wonder if you two were dating after all—“ He stops, his eyes widening. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Robin says, trying to hold her voice steady. She plucks the cigarette from Steve’s fingers, takes a drag herself. Slumps a little further as she blows it out. “Not dating, as it turns out.”

“Geez. What was wrong with her?” Steve’s clear personal offense is adorably gratifying. “She just not into girls?”

Robin makes a disparaging noise. “That’s almost the worst part. You know what she said to me? _I’m sorry, I like you.”_ She does a halfway-decent impression of Tammy’s soft falsetto. _“It’s just…it’s Hawkins. People talk._ ” She takes another drag, blows it out, disgusted. “Like I didn’t already know I was a freak.”

“Well, you’re in good company. We’re all freaks,” he says. “It’s why we’re sticking together, remember?”

Robin laughs a little. “I guess you’re right, at that. Non-freaks probably don’t accidentally uncover Russian bases or fight weird-ass plant monsters.” One more drag, and she hands the cigarette back to Steve. “So. What the hell's up with you and Hargrove?"

Steve finishes it off, tosses the butt in the ashtray. Slumps a little more. “I think I’ve screwed this whole plan up already.”

Robin has to smile. “Would ‘this plan’ be something along the lines of ‘cheer up Billy Hargrove by buying him tickets and taking him to California without, say, asking him first if he’d like that’? Because if you’d run it by me I could’ve told you that maybe Billy wasn’t the type to be terribly appreciative of people making decisions for him. Dingus."

“Yeah. I guess I thought it'd help.” Steve’s tone is morose, and his fingers twitch, like he’s envisioning going for another cigarette. “Y'know. With July coming up and all.”

There’s a car hunting for a spot in the next parking lot over; Robin can see its headlights through the bushes, yellow in the greying light. A lone animal, separated and vulnerable, nosing about for a place to blend in with a new herd. “Help how, exactly?”

Steve thinks for a minute. “It’s like…he used to brag about California all the time, right? Before. How much nicer it was. How there was better food, and the girls were prettier, and the weather was nicer, and blah blah blah…” He shakes his head. “And he hadn’t mentioned it recently, but I thought maybe it was just because of everything that’d happened, like he couldn’t even imagine it anymore. And then summer started to roll around, and it was like he was getting more and more angry all the time.”

“How could you tell?” Robin’s tone is a little dry, but her curiosity isn’t faked. Nor is the prick of worry between her shoulderblades—after what she's just seen, she wouldn't put it past Hargrove to be getting physical with Steve—

Steve seems to sense her alarm; he waves his hand, as if to dispel any remaining cigarette smoke between them. “Not like he used to be. He just…goes quiet. And I can’t seem to get anything out of him.” A half-smile. "I'm a little relieved, actually. Today's outburst is the most emotion I've seen him show in months."

"That's extremely reassuring," Robin says, even more dry.

Steve just shrugs. "Anyway. I thought, this is something I can do. I’ll take us on a road trip. Take us someplace new. Take him home, for a bit. At the very least I’ll get us all out of Hawkins for a couple weeks.”

“And he’s not happy about it.” Robin finishes the story. 

“I mean, he’s not angry. Not most of the time, anyway. It’s just…like he’s humoring me.” A pause for thought. “I wanted to feel useful, you know? Like I was doing something to help him. He doesn’t fit in in Hawkins anymore, if he ever did. So I thought maybe we should go someplace we might like better…” Steve’s voice trails off, and he buries his face in his hands. “You can tell me I suck anytime,” he says, only a little bit of a wail hiding beneath the words.

A mental list of acerbic replies presents itself in Robin’s mind—but she puts it away. “I think you wanted to do something kind. And that’s no bad thing.”

“I guess.” The words are muffled behind his hands.

Robin lets her head fall back against the stucco. Takes some comfort in its solidity as she ponders this knot Steve’s handed her; at the very least, it's a distraction from the tightening in her chest, the slight twinge of jealousy she doesn't want to acknowledge. “I admit I don’t know him like you do, but is Billy really the type to do anything just to humor anybody?”

Steve rubs at his eyes, laughs a little. Shrugs. “I dunno. Maybe he feels like he owes me.”

Robin thinks back to the weeks when Billy was recovering in the hospital, then later in the convalescent home. Remembers how tirelessly Steve would go to visit him, would bring him snacks and little gifts (though he’d drawn the line at flowers, Steve had told her, after she was done laughing at how chagrined he looked holding the rejected bouquet). Remembers how consistently Steve would head to Billy's place—not every night, but at least once or twice a week, bringing movies or books or just catching him up on the local gossip. If it were anyone else, maybe Steve's assessment would be right, but...she turns her head to look over at Steve, feels the grittiness of the pebbled texture through her hair. “It’s possible,” she concedes. “But maybe it’s more that he’s afraid.”

Steve, bless him, looks genuinely confused. “Of what? I don’t think the Upside Down’s ever shown up in California.” 

“No, not that.” Robin thinks for a moment, trying to figure out how to put it into words. “You remember what he was like, before the Mind Flayer. Total asshole.”

Steve at least half-smiles at that. “Yeah.” The smile disappears as he runs his fingers through his hair, absently. “You know the hell he went through.”

Robin doesn’t, not really—she only experienced it from the outside. She knows the trickle of fear in her gut at the memory of Billy’s face, utterly empty of emotion. She knows exactly how her breath trembled, watching his inhuman gait as he moved toward her hiding place. She knows the combined ice and heat beneath her skin, seeing him turn on his captor, his controller, watching him fight back. She remembers the strange combination of emotions she’d experienced as he fell, a combination of relief, and sadness, and almost—envy. 

It made his story so simple. He was a troubled kid who was mind-controlled, fought his captor, died saving them all. No need to take responsibility for the people his body had killed. It was all so easy. Neat. Heroic.

But then he hadn’t died. And then Steve had decided they were going to be friends. Despite the fact that Robin still regularly has nightmares of being stalked by a monster wearing Billy’s face.

And that made things so much more complicated.

She realizes Steve’s still waiting for an answer. “I can imagine,” she says. “My point is, he’s a different person now. And if he has good memories of California, maybe that’s like…his happy place. If he goes back, he risks losing that.”

“Maybe.” Steve sounds uncertain. “But what can I do? If I tell him I’ve changed my mind about the concert, I’m afraid he’ll just want to go back to Hawkins. Spend most of his time staring at the wall again.”

Robin nods. “Yeah. That doesn’t sound great.” She adjusts her seat on the bench, tries to find one that doesn't make her ass go numb. “Do _you_ want to go to California?”

“Kinda. I haven't been there since I was a kid at Disneyland. But I hear it's pretty amazing.” Steve smiles a little into the distance, wistful. “Maybe he’ll teach me to surf.” He seems to catch himself, cheeks pinking a little. "Just...do me a favor, okay? Cut him some slack. He's been through a lot."

And—that’s when the penny drops. If the penny were the approximate size and density of a fucking anvil. 

Steve’s into Billy.

Christ.

The silence stretches out between them, though inside Robin’s head, she’s adding together any number of moments, of offhand comments. His determination not to leave Billy alone. The way he kept bringing him along to the movies or whatever else they had planned. The slightly dejected air he always had when they were fighting. A vague comment or two he’d made, usually while stoned, that maybe some guys were pretty good-looking. It all makes so much sense that she’s amazed she hasn’t seen it before. 

She wonders if Steve even sees it.

That knot in her chest is pulling again, insistent, just this side of painful. She’d known, of course, that it was unlikely that she and Steve would be best friends forever, working at the video store by day, sneaking through Russian bases by night. Known that this was a transitional phase in his life; with his corn-fed good looks and his wealthy parents, he had more options, a bigger future than she did. People grew, found other confidantes, found love. She wasn't always going to be his number one priority.

Which doesn’t mean she hadn’t hoped for it, a little.

"I'm pretty sure he can handle himself." She gets up, dusts off the seat of her jeans, ignores the squeezing sensation in her chest. Winces as a splinter catches in her palm. "But as for the trip...well, we might as well keep going, see what happens. Maybe he’ll warm up to it. We could always stay an extra day or two in Vegas to butter him up.”

“That might be fun.” Steve smiles as he stands, and it’s almost worth the empty feeling her compressed heart leaves in her ribcage, the sense of impending loss that joins the formless foreshadowing in her mind.

 _Everything changes,_ she reminds herself sternly. _Even in Hawkins._

She just has to hope it’ll be for the better.


	4. love but it's so slashed and torn

“I'm sorry,” Billy says.

It takes a moment for the words to sink in, for Robin to look up from the note she's scribbling to go with the tip for housekeeping. She blinks. "Pardon?"

Billy's face twists into a scowl. "You want me to say it again?"

 _More that I'm surprised the phrase is even in your vocabulary._ She bites back the comment; she made a promise to Steve. Instead, she shrugs. "It's cool, I guess."

Billy gives a short nod, half-turns, as if ending the exchange. Robin's finished the note—pointedly not mentioning the dog-pee smell—when he turns to face her again. "I'm just...not sure what he wants from me."

She gives a mental sigh as she puts the note in the envelope, wishes Steve would hurry up with the car. Takes a moment to carefully center the envelope on the desk before she angles the desk chair to face a little more towards Billy. "Steve?"

"Who else?" Billy shoves his hands in his pockets. "It's not like I've got hundreds of other pretty boys beating down the door to be my friend."

 _Well, we've got that in common,_ Robin thinks. "Steve's a good guy," she says aloud. "If he cares about you, he cares."

"Yeah. Cares." Billy shifts his weight. She finds herself wishing that she had the camera to hand—something about the picture Billy makes, the medallion falling over his overtly casual wifebeater, the arc of his shoulders. The gloom of the cheap hotel room lit by a strip of sunlight falling on his jeans, highlighting the beginnings of a tear at one knee.

After a moment, Robin prods. "So, what's the problem?"

Billy fidgets for a moment. "Do you know why he planned this trip?"

Robin wonders how much she should say. "He said he wanted to cheer you up."

"Maybe." Another pause, then he comes over, sits on the bed across from Robin. "I think...he wants me to move to California with him. Permanently."

Robin opens her mouth. Closes it again. Hears Steve's voice, the previous evening: _I thought maybe we should go someplace we might like better…_

There's something wrong with this chair, she thinks, vaguely, before realizing that the chair is fine, she's just swaying slightly. She straightens, swallows. Finds her voice. "When?"

"I dunno. He hasn't asked straight out yet. But you know him." Billy doesn't smile, exactly, but something in his face lightens a bit, as if fond. "He's not as subtle as he thinks he is."

"Yes. That's true." It _is_ true; a solid truth, something Robin can cling to. "I could guess all the Christmas presents he bought me by a week into December." Her voice sounds so normal, even as her brain is spinning. _Was he planning this even then…?_

Billy gives a half-chuckle, leans back on the bed. "God, could you imagine if he ever tried to get work as a spy? He wouldn't last five minutes."

Robin has to laugh at the thought. "I dunno. He could be a professional bystander. Distract the authorities. Can you imagine anyone better at protesting innocence?" 

"Hell no. He'd be amazing. The spy would be long gone by the time anyone got past the Bambi eyes." 

"Just so long as nobody told him there was actually a mission happening." A beat, as the warmth of the joke fades into the hollowness behind her solar plexus. "So, are you gonna say yes?"

Billy takes a breath. Lets it out. Gets up, walks over to the middle of the room. Stops. Turns back.

“You’re queer, aren’t you?”

In a different context, Robin would be more than a little nonplussed, if not outright concerned, by the question. But this conversation has already taken so many hard left turns, all she can do is see it through. She lifts her chin a fraction, stares Billy down. "Yeah. Why? Are you?"

A beat. Billy takes out a cigarette and lights it. Drags deep, blows it out. Then: "Yeah."

"Huh." Robin wonders, somewhere in the far periphery of her mental orbit, if he's ever said that aloud before. "Did Steve let it slip? About me?"

He doesn’t smile, exactly, but gives a sort of half-chuckle around the cigarette. “Nah," he says, talking around the cigarette. But I don't know many straight girls who'll voluntarily wear a vest with jean shorts." He takes it out of his mouth, uses it to gesture. "Also, the shoes were a clue."

She glances down at her battered red sneakers. Half-smiles at the mental image of her newly-eighteen-year-old self with her first full-time job, feeling so grown-up and rebellious scribbling _I won’t go down in history but I will go down on your sister_ on the otherwise dress-code-compliant shoes. “Yeah, okay. I am. In theory, anyway.” Billy flicks an eyebrow, and she feels her cheeks pink a little. “Hawkins wasn’t exactly full of opportunities.” Tammy’s voice in her head, again. _It’s this place—  
_

"Yeah, I'd believe that." Billy nods, puts the cigarette back in his mouth, drags. "So you get it."

Robin looks back up at him. "Get what?"

"He cares about me. He cares too much." Billy gestures to Robin. "He doesn't know what it's like, being queer. He's never had to live that life. It's not..." He takes another drag and sighs it out, frustrated. Taps ash onto the carpet. "If he doesn't have to live that way, he shouldn't."

Robin is tempted to point out that this is a nonsmoking room, but frankly, one cigarette can hardly make it smell any worse. "Don't you think that should be his choice to make?"

"Yes. No. I mean—" Billy makes a disgusted noise. "Look. Queer people don't exist in Hawkins, right?"

"Uh—"

Billy waves a hand, smoke swirling through the air. "You know what I mean. We exist, duh. But nobody acknowledges us. The closest thing you get is a don't-bend-over-in-the-shower joke."

Robin shrugs. "Yeah, more or less. The art geeks were snickering about Susan Sarandon, a couple years back."

"Right. Well, in California, it's different. There's _…_ a culture, of sorts. But it means you're visible, and when you're visible, you're a target." He takes a drag, staring at the window, for all that the curtains are mostly closed. "He wouldn't leave me alone," he says, his voice a little softer. "Kept coming to see me, even when I told him to get lost. Gave me rides to _therapy_ , for fuck's sake. If he knew..." He trails off. "I don't want him to have to deal with that shit."

They're silent for a moment. Robin can feel that ache settling familiarly into her chest, but it's multiplied, metastasized—an answering note in her gut, a thick feeling in her throat. Surprise, fear, sadness, a perfect I-IV-V with a relative minor of betrayal. The opening key to the next movement in her life.

She pitches her voice quiet, gentle, hopes it stays steady. "Do you care about him?"

"That's not the point." Billy's response is sharp, quick, the flare of anger in his eyes sudden enough to be an answer in itself. He pauses, as if realizing he's been caught out; after a moment he looks away. Takes a moment to drag. "It's not about me."

Robin considers pressing, but ultimately decides that Billy was right the day before—it's not her business. Besides. Steve deserves to be happy, even if she's not going to be around to see it. "I know Steve pretty well by now," she says, pitching her voice gently. "He's not going to stop caring about you. So he must think you're worth it."

"Yeah. Well." Billy takes a final drag, drops the cigarette and grinds it out with the heel of his boot. "He's still young."

The sudden surge of _you dingus_ is a welcome respite from unfamiliar emotional waters. She takes a moment to savor it, then puts on an aggressively cheerful expression. "You should know," she says, "if you prove him wrong, I _will_ hunt you down and stab you through the ribcage with a butter knife." She looks Billy straight in the eye and smiles, bright as new-polished chrome. "Just so's we're clear."

Billy startles for a moment, eyes wide. Then, to her surprise, he relaxes. Gives a short, harsh laugh. "Yeah, been there, done that."

Steve picks that moment to waltz in through the front door. Robin takes in his puffy vest, his dark polo, his windblown hair, feels the resonance of that chord again. "Everyone ready?" He takes his sunglasses off, looks from Robin to Billy. "Denver's not going to be there forever."

Robin carefully shuts the lid on her feelings, mentally sits on it for good measure. Is grateful to Steve for handing her such a perfect straight line, giving her a moment to find her feet again, even unintentionally. “Maybe on a geologic timescale, dingus. Pretty sure the Rockies aren't disappearing tomorrow.”

“You know,” Billy says, a little of his old cockiness back in his stance, “Denver’s pretty high up. So if we get laid there, we’ll technically be members of the Mile High Club.”

“Uh…” Steve’s cheeks are going pink, and Robin, rapidly regretting having given her implicit blessing, comes to his rescue. “Nope, neither of you are my type, thanks.” She grabs her suitcase and heads out to the car, and Steve—perhaps a little regretfully—follows.


	5. things are going great, and they're only gettin' better

“How did you know? That you were, uh.” Steve stammers to a stop.

Robin pauses, a spoonful of Butterfinger Blizzard halfway to her mouth, and looks up from the old copy of _People_ she'd been paging through. Looks at Steve for a moment. The sun shines down through the glass skylight of the food court, catching on the white terrazzo tables and tile, making her squint even behind her sunglasses. _The future’s so bright, I’ve gotta wear shades…_ Steve’s pushing ketchup around with his French fries, staring down like the pattern of quartz embedded in the tabletop holds the answers to the universe. “Queer?”

"Yeah. I guess." His cheeks go pink. "Sorry. That's probably rude."

“You're asking when the New Lesbian Task Force showed up on my doorstep with a pair of Doc Martens and a Certified Gay wallet card?” Robin wonders if she’ll ever get tired of watching Steve’s glass face. “I had to figure that part out on my own. But the way I kept looking at the girls in school was a clue.”

“I like girls too. They’re soft.” He winces, as if realizing this is a little lame even for him. “And pretty.”

Robin puts the spoonful of ice cream into her mouth, as much to aid in keeping her face neutral as anything. Swallows. “No arguments here.”

“And, like, I’ve been in love before, even if she wasn’t, and I always assumed I’d get married and buy a house and work in some boring office somewhere—”

Robin has to physically force herself not to roll her eyes; at this rate, Billy’s going to get back before Steve spits it out. “—but?”

A pause. “I guess I never even looked at guys that way before—" He stops again. Clears his throat. “I didn’t realize it was an option.”

Robin suspects a certain amount of _you dingus_ is slipping out of her expression. “And suddenly you’re looking,” she says, filling in the blanks.

Steve turns his head, probably involuntarily, in the direction Billy went. Rubs at the side of his face with one hand before slipping it alongside his neck, looking anywhere but at Robin. “I just…I don’t know. Maybe." A sigh, as lovelorn as any romantic heroine in a movie. "It’s a moot point anyway. I don’t think he’s into me. I’m nowhere near cool enough. Even if he is gay.” Steve smiles a little, looking somewhere between “wistful” and “gormless”.

Robin loves Steve and would die for him—nearly did, right—but she wonders if all lesbians feel this urge to tear their hair out over the idiot boys in their life. “Have you asked him?” She enunciates each word slowly and clearly, and punctuates the last one with a look over her sunglasses.

The expression on his face is priceless—even a deer in headlights couldn’t compete with those eyes. “Fuck no, he’d probably kick my ass.” A beat. Quieter. "Besides. I don't know how to be...that way."

Robin carefully takes another bite of ice cream as she considers how to respond. As she considers, probably for the first time, what it’s like to be a queer boy. At least she'd been reasonably certain Tammy Thompson wouldn't punch her in the face. “Well. Guess it’s the suburbs and the shitty office job for you after all.” She smiles, a little too bright. "Don't worry, I'll come visit on holidays."

She only just catches Steve's stricken expression before Billy returns and Steve's face settles into its usual cheerful lines once more. He sits next to Steve, slurps down the last of his Coke, steals the last of Steve's fries. “What’d I miss?”

Robin gives him a smile that competes with the atrium for sparkle as Steve tries to grab the French fry back. “Just talking about what we’d like to do in San Diego,” she says, watching Billy hold the fry out of Steve’s reach until he manages to shove it in his mouth. “Isn’t the zoo world-famous?”

Billy shrugs as Steve gives up, punches him in the arm. “I guess, if that’s what you’re into.”

“I like animals. They’re interesting.” Steve looks like he’s going to pout, but changes his mind. “Maybe there’s a custom car show we can see? I’ve heard the car scene in Southern California is killer.”

“Most of the big ones are in the spring. But we might be able to find one up in Sacramento.” He winks at Steve. “Think you could keep from drooling all over the paint jobs?”

“Would _you_ be able to keep from jizzing yourself when they bring out the new model year Camaros?”

“I guess that depends on whether or not they’re actually putting in those 5.7 liter V8s this year—”

Robin returns to her magazine. Scrapes out the last of the ice cream from the paper cup, ignores the sinking feeling in her gut. _God save me from boys flirting,_ she thinks, turning the page—she blinks as she reads the headline. Starts laughing, even as she feels that squeezing in her chest again. It's just too perfect. Like a premonition, an augury, only found in the pages of an old gossip rag rather than the entrails of some poor creature. _  
_

“What’s so funny?” Steve looks over at her.

Robin turns the magazine around. Right there at the top of the page, opposite an ad for the VHS release of that Kevin Kline western, above a photo of the duo accepting an award:

WHAM! GOES BOOM! AS GEORGE MICHAEL DUMPS HIS BITTER HALF, ANDREW RIDGELEY

Steve’s face morphs into a caricature of shock. “But they’re so good!” 

His stricken tone makes Robin feel a little guilty. "Things change," she says, shortly, closing the magazine and tossing it back onto the pile on the next table over. "People change. Sometimes friendships change. It's not the end of the world."

"Yeah, but..." Steve's face, having traveled all the way from denial to grief in the space of a few seconds, settles on "crestfallen." "There's just so much more they could do together."

"Like make a root canal seem appealing," Billy puts in. He nudges Steve with an elbow. "Wait until you see Eddie Van Halen solo on 'Dreams'. You'll forget all about these two."

 _The same way you'll forget about me when you run off together._ It's an unworthy thought, and Robin squelches it, busies herself with collecting their detritus, piling her Blizzard cup and Steve's Coke cup and assorted burger wrappers and used napkins on a tray. "I prefer 'Jump', myself," she says, shoving the tray towards Steve.

Billy scoffs as Steve gathers up the tray and heads over to the trash bins. "You listen to the radio too much, Robs."

Robin pauses. Looks over at Billy. Leans in across the table, just a smidge further than strictly necessary, eyes wide, eyebrows raised. "Doooo tell," she says, drawing the vowel out extra long.

"I'm just saying. 'Jump' has that keyboard hook, but when you listen to the whole album you'll hear the solo work on 'Drop Dead Legs' is—aaah!" Billy's lecture is abruptly cut off when Steve dumps a handful of Coke-cup ice down the back of his shirt. He takes off, hooting with laughter, and it's barely a moment before Billy's after him.

Robin finds them outside, Billy with Steve in a headlock, Steve yelping as Billy applies friction to his skull. Having ascertained that nobody is in immediate danger of losing a limb, she climbs in to the backseat to wait it out; eventually, the two of them break it off and join her. Billy grabs Robin's atlas off the dashboard; Steve digs through the change and fast food wrappers and other detritus in the center console until he finds the blue and white cassette box. "Hah!"

“Harrington, I swear to god if you play that tape out one more time I’m going to throw it out the window.” Billy doesn’t look up from Robin’s atlas, tracing their route to Denver and beyond, but his voice doesn’t sound like he’s joking. Robin can’t even blame him. She'd had Joan Jett blasting through her headphones the last time, and something about Wham!'s aggressive catchiness _still_ managed to creep in around the edges.

“It’s cheerful,” Steve says, as if that’s any sort of defense for having made them listen to _Make It Big_ three separate times yesterday. "And if they're splitting up, shouldn't we enjoy them while they're around?"

“The cassette's still going to be there next month, dingus.” Robin does her best to keep her tone light, but maybe a little of the irritation bleeds through. "Let's give it a rest today."

Steve sighs, but, outnumbered, he puts the cassette back in its case. Leans over Billy’s lap to dig around in the glove compartment for another option.

The atlas being momentarily obscured by Steve’s hair, Billy turns his attention to critiquing Steve’s music choices. “No. I don’t do The Police either.” “But _Synchronicity_ is a classic!” “No, _British Steel_ is a classic, The Police are dreck.” “Fine, how about U2?” “Jesus, Harrington, you really are an eleven year old girl.” “Dustin likes them.” “I rest my case—“

Robin rolls her eyes—then is hit with an idea. "All right, enough, both of you," she says. "I'm taking over the music." 

"Great," Billy snarks as she digs a tape out of her satchel. "Can't wait to listen to all of _Beauty and the Beat_ three times in a row."

"The Go-Gos are O.G. Hollywood punk, I'll have you know." Robin puts her tape in, sits back as minor-key synth inversions fill the car. "Come on, let's get going."

The silence that follows, despite lasting less than a minute, is as perfect and beautiful as anything John Cage could dream up. If she could record it, Robin knows exactly what she'd write on the tape: _53 Seconds of Billy Hargrove Eating His Own Words._ It's almost enough to make her forget the squeezing sensation of that knot in her chest.

Steve is just pulling onto the on-ramp when Billy finally speaks up again. "So. Hagar or Roth?"

Robin nudges Steve in the shoulder, gently. "I think there's nothing wrong with liking both," she says, as the opening keyboard riff to "Jump" sends them off onto the highway.


	6. watch the sun rise

“Robin, Billy, slow down. I’m dying.” Steve gasps dramatically, waving his arms before clutching at the railing. “How many stairs does this place have?”

Robin pauses—in truth, her heart feels like two flabby slabs of bologna slapping together. Stupid elevation. “Not sure,” she says, trying not to sound short of breath. “The pamphlet said there was some hiking and some stairs from the parking lot. It didn’t say anything about needing mountaineering gear.”

Steve groans and flops down on the stairs, pushing his sunglasses up on his nose. Billy, of course, looks much the same as ever, apparently unaffected by the brightness, the exertion, or the elevation. Robin spares a moment to mentally grumble about boys with pathological workout regimens as he turns. “You need a break already? We’re barely halfway up.”

Robin turns, flips him off. “You can go ahead if you want to, Schwarznegger. I’m going to make sure our boy here doesn’t pass out.” She sits next to Steve on the steps, unscrews her canteen, and takes a few sips before passing it to Steve.

Billy makes a disgruntled noise, but he retraces his steps, flops down on the step above them. “Well, the brochure didn’t lie. There’s a hell of a view, anyway.” The moment Steve is done drinking from the canteen, Billy snags it from his hand.

The view really is lovely. The sun’s maybe a half-hour from setting, and butter-golden rays wash over the entirety of the valley below them, gilding the nearby rock faces a rose-gold color, creating long shadows where distant trees speckle the landscape. Robin pulls the camera from her satchel, takes a moment to frame a shot, hits the release button—then strikes like a snake, grabbing her canteen back from Billy with a triumphant “hah!” 

“It almost doesn’t look real,” Steve says, looking out over the landscape from behind his sunglasses as she screws the lid back on. “Like we’re on another planet.”

“Nah.” Billy leans back on his hand. “Parts of California look a lot like this. Brown hills, green trees. Until the monsoons hit and then everything starts to grow.” 

There’s an odd tone to his voice, partly wistful, but with another overtone that Robin can’t quite identify. She’s saved from answering when Steve’s voice interjects. “What was your favorite time of year?”

“High summer. No question. Anytime I could get out to the beach and ride the waves, really, but there’s something about the clear blue water on a hot day…”

“Purifying.” Robin remembers childhood leaps into the lake at the quarry, the shock of ice-cold water against sun-heated skin. “Everything just…washes away.”

“Will you teach me?” Steve’s looking up at Billy now, and Robin can envision those big dark eyes. She turns her head, ostensibly to look at Steve, just far enough to catch Billy’s reaction out of the corner of her eye.

Billy’s eyes are hooded. Alluring, dangerous. “You want to learn to surf?”

“We’ve been the Kings of Hawkins.” Steve turns his head back to look out over the landscape. “Why shouldn’t we rule the oceans, too?”

Robin nudges his shoulder with hers, laughing a little. “Greedy.”

“It’s a good quality in a king.” Billy stands up, dusts his pants off. “I’m gonna run the rest of the way up. I’ll see you two bozos at the top.”

There's a pause after he leaves, a moment of quiet tension between Robin and Steve. She considers bringing up something inane, avoiding the topic entirely. But the weight in her gut has been growing, becoming heavier throughout the day, and she's not certain how much longer she can stand it.

She dips a toe in the water. "If you keep pointing those puppy-dog eyes at him, he's gonna think you'll be making the next trip west in a U-Haul."

Steve doesn't respond right away. His ears go a little pink—though that could be sunburn—and he keeps taking in the landscape, the beginnings of the sunset. Deposed royalty planning a triumphant return. "Maybe we will."

Robin gives a half-laugh, tries to find a response. "Right. Got that surfing crown waiting for you in California."

He looks at her, and she sees her face mirrored twice over in his sunglasses. For a moment—something in the tilt of his chin, the careless angle of his shoulders—she can see the Steve Harrington who was King of Hawkins High. “I don’t exactly have a crown in Hawkins anymore.”

“Is that all you care about? Being king?” She’d intended the words to sound breezy and careless, but they come out with a jagged edge that catches in her throat.

Steve's expression changes, but she has a hard time reading exactly how with the sunglasses. "Do you know what I like about Billy?"

"Is it the fact that he constantly argues with you?" Robin's voice is tart. "I assume you like that, because otherwise your relationship makes no sense—"

" _Yeah,_ he argues," Steve says, insistent. "Sometimes he's a little mean. But he doesn't act like I'm _stupid._ For liking Wham!. Or for being upset that they're breaking up. Or for not really knowing how to ask another guy—" He comes up short, makes a spiraling gesture with one hand before dropping it.

That brings Robin up short. She pauses, looks up towards Billy's rapidly-receding figure, looks back at Steve. "I never said you were stupid."

"Maybe you don't say it. But I still hear it." Steve looks back out over the view. "It's okay. Everyone else in Hawkins thinks so too. Even my dad. Just...at least Dustin and Nancy tell me I'm an idiot to my face."

There's another silence, somehow even tenser than the last. Robin should give it up, she knows, let Steve cool down a bit, but some perverse instinct won't let her let it go.

"Well then." She cocks an eyebrow. "When are you two moving?"

"Hell if I know. I haven't asked him yet. And I know—" he raises his voice slightly, forestalling Robin's interruption—"I know that makes me a dingus. Or a dumbass. Or stupid. But, like. The last time I made assumptions about my future with somebody, I kinda got my heart kicked around like a football. I'm just...trying to take it one step at a time, y'know?"

Robin snorts. "Yeah, well, if you think you're being subtle, you're not. I'm pretty sure any gay in five miles can tell you two are into each other." She means the words to be encouraging, but acid eats its way into them as well, makes them caustic. She gets up, dusts herself off. "I guess I'll keep an eye out for the wedding invitation."

Steve doesn't get up, when she starts back up the stairs. Robin tells herself that's fine. He'll be along eventually.

For now, the dissonant jangling of her feelings is company enough.

*

By the time she reaches the stage level, they're no closer to resolution.

She’d thought Steve was just as much a part of Hawkins as she was. Just as held by it, as molded to it, as enmeshed in its gossips and its quirks. It felt _right_ , that they’d both been privy to its darkest secrets—they were also its guardians, the ones who had risked life and limb to maintain the normalcy that its citizens enjoyed. In a very real way, they almost _were_ Hawkins. And maybe that would’ve been lonely if had been her alone, but—they had each other. For nights scarfing down pizza while high as fuck on shitty weed. For sleepovers where they made use of their free rentals to bring home a stack of movies for mocking (“Why the hell did they call it Top Gun? You _know_ he’s bottoming for Iceman”). For afternoons spent tossing rocks in the quarry and mooning over their respective crushes. They were _there_ for each other. 

_Why the hell am I so attached to Hawkins when nobody else seems to be?_

She glances up the steps, then back down. No sign of Steve or Billy. Billy's probably already in the amphitheatre, if he hasn't already made a circuit and headed back down the other side. Steve could still be staring out over the park for all Robin cares. She pauses to catch her breath, notices the door in the wall to her left, painted a dusty red-brown to match the wall. The words NO ADMITTANCE are stenciled on it in black paint, as if the lack of a handle on the outside wasn't a clue.

There’s a shim holding it slightly open, she notices, like the cleaners have gone for a smoke break.

She glances around again. No sign of anyone.

"If this turns out to be another secret Russian base, I'm calling bullshit," she mutters to herself before slipping inside.

The building is dim inside and blessedly cool, in the way thick stone keeps a room cool. Robin's been in her share of venues, what with concerts and recitals; this one's better laid-out than most, with a refreshing lack of warren-like corridors to navigate or oddly-shaped rooms used for storage or wardrobe or other, unnameable purposes. The wing appears to be one large room, she realizes as her eyes adjust; there's clutter here and there, cables coiled in one corner, mic stands along a wall. Stacks of chairs against the opposite wall, looming over the small space. A few windows set high in the walls let in a bit of light.

It’s comforting, in truth. Prepared, but not urgent. A good place to hide, to take a few breaths and recover. There’s a fairly recent copy of Billboard Magazine on a table by the stage door; she picks it up, pages through it. A feature on Madonna. A quick interview with the Pet Shop Boys. And then—

GEORGE AND ANDREW'S FINAL WHAM!

God, she can't get away from it. It's like this whole trip is cursed. Which—she squints at the text in the dim light—really only figures, because they're playing their last concert in London, the same night as Van Halen in San Diego.

She wonders, grumpily, if Steve would fly out to London, if he knew. Ditch her entirely.

Wonders, with a more painful jab, if this wasn't exactly why Steve had asked her along in the first place. Their final tour—

She tosses the magazine aside. Moves to the middle of the space. Rolls out her neck, her shoulders. Starts going through the motions of her warmups. Stretches. She doesn't have an instrument, but she can sing, a little. Scales. Arpeggios. It's calming.

When she feels a little less like she wants to scream, she moves over to the stage door. Presses the lever. Opens it out.

Rich gold sunlight pours onto her skin as soon as she steps out. The stage is little more than an open awning with lighting rigs and boom arms; the famed rocks rise up before and behind her, silent and profound observers to the stage and the audience alike. The sunset sits between them, framed and emphasized by the stones, the awning, the whole shape of the place. 

She stands for a moment, looking at it. Feels her mood lift, just a fraction.

She turns toward the risers. They’re mostly empty; a few locals or tourists sit, enjoying the view or picnicking in the cooler evening weather. There’s no particular sign of Steve or Billy, though most of the figures are too small for her to make out. Robin looks around, half-waiting for some stagehand or similar person of authority to come shoo her away, but there’s no sign of anybody. She’s alone, in this perfectly shaped, perfectly intimidating space.

She takes a breath. Lets it out. Snaps her fingers. Listens to the perfect crispness the sound makes. Does it again. The acoustics are genuinely incredible.

“You put the boom-boom into my heart—”

No. She stops shakes her head. It’s not the right song, not now. A breeze blows through the pavilion, and she moves a little closer to center stage. Hums a different note in another key entirely. Lets her mental repertoire settle into a different song. Hits the side of her thigh in a slower beat, thumping, steady, inexorable. 

“Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise—“

It’s not the right time of day for the lyric, her inner critic points out, but she shushes it. It's not about accuracy. It's about _feeling._ And God knows she's got plenty of that, right now.

“Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies—“

Voice isn’t her preferred instrument, or even her third or fourth. She’s acutely aware that hers is of middling quality at best. But a decade and a half of training in music theory and pitch and breath support—not to mention regular rotation of _Rumors_ through her Walkman— serves her in good stead; the syncopated phrasing doesn’t trip her up. 

“And if you don’t love me now, you will never love me again—“

Someone’s singing with her. She almost drops the beat, but the training takes over; she keeps it going, looks around.

There’s another girl, a couple rows up in the risers. Dark hair, intense dark eyes, dusky skin, watching Robin with an expression halfway between joy and worship. She’s singing along—not just singing, but _harmonizing_ , delivering the counterpoint, echoed words and intertwined melodies perfectly timed. Their eyes meet, and for a moment, they’re Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie, voices chasing each other in a cycle of desire and hopelessness, with all the confidence of musicians with an entire crowd here to see them, all the confidence to ignore that crowd and just sing to each other, determined in the face of mutual heartbreak—

Something catches her eye, a bright spot higher up in the amphitheatre. She glances up—it’s the sun catching on Billy’s pendant as he watches, arms crossed, blonde hair bright in the fading sunlight. She can't make out his face, but imagines it's its usual expressionless mask. 

As she watches, as they sing, Steve approaches him, dark hair and clothes a contrast, a complement. 

He turns and sees Steve, and his entire demeanor shifts. Lightens. Softens. An arm goes around Steve's shoulders in a sidewise hug, stays there.

“Never break the chain…”

The girl’s voice delivers the last echo of the last line, alone. Robin’s eyes move back to her; she’s smiling, entranced. For a moment, Robin imagines vaulting over the stage railings, bounding up the steps, finding her. Demanding to know her name—no, not even talking. Just taking her up in her arms, sweeping her into a Hollywood kiss until they’re both breathless. Running off with her into the sunset, starting an entirely new life, leaping headfirst into the unknown.

The girl’s lips part, as if she’s going to call out.

Robin smiles back, drops her eyes—and then walks back through the stage door. Doesn’t run, doesn’t make it obvious that she’s fleeing, even though she is. 

Even she knows that’s not how her story goes.


	7. the ice age is comin', the sun's zoomin' in

“I told you, Harrington. I don’t want to talk about it.”

They’re somewhere in southwestern Colorado, and Robin's spent most of the day listening to The Clash, watching the landscape go from mountains to desert. Even well into the afternoon, the sun is beating down through the windows of the BMW with a kind of relentless fury Robin begrudgingly admires. It’s as if, without the Midwestern pea-soup humidity filling the air, the force of the rays are multiplied, the sun standing twice as close as normal, making them all extra aware of its presence. The car’s A/C is on full blast, gas mileage be damned; even so, the three of them are just a little hotter than is comfortable.

_You make the sun shine brighter than Doris Day…_

Unfortunately, even _London Calling_ can't compete with the penetrating peppiness of _Make It Big_. Robin tears off her headphones in disgust, which, of course, only means she gets to hear firsthand Billy's stubborn baritone, Steve's whiny tenor. _You turned a bright spark into a flame—_

“Don’t want to talk about California? You couldn’t shut up about it when you first moved to Hawkins.” Steve probably doesn’t mean to sound snippy, but the heat’s getting to him too—Robin can see perspiration stains under his arms, and his hair is wilting slightly at the roots. “Don’t pretend otherwise—I had to listen to all of your bragging secondhand through Tommy whenever we crossed paths. It was kinda disgusting.”

“If California’s so disgusting, why the fuck are you so determined to hound me about it?” Billy’s not in much better shape; his wifebeater is definitely looking a little dingy, and his jeans have ripped completely across one knee. A few curls straggle down his neck, half-straightened and glued there by sweat; even his pendant seems to hang listlessly, if that’s possible. “Why are we even going there in the first place? We have literally the entire western United States we could go see, what is this bug up your ass about San Diego specifically?”

Robin leans her head against the window, watching the scenery go by. The mountains have lowered to little more than occasional rises, the trees almost entirely replaced by scrubs and tufts of wild grass; even without the weather, the terrain alone is saying “desert” louder with each passing mile. For a moment, she entertains a bitterly satisfying mental image of the two of them crawling through the wasteland, inching towards some distant oasis that was only ever a mirage.

She wonders if they'd still be bickering while dying of thirst.

“It’s not a bug up my ass, I just figure, if you’re going to talk to Tommy about it and not me—“

“That was three years ago, Harrington, I was a whole separate person then—“

No, she decides, if they keep this up, she’s going to wring their necks with her bare hands long before they’re in danger of dying of thirst. In the interests of forestalling such an unhappy eventuality, she scoots into the middle seat and leans forward. “Not to interrupt this _extremely_ important argument," she says, not even bothering to hide the sarcastic emphasis, "but do either of you have any idea where we’re going?”

“Four Corners.” Steve practically bites the words off. To his credit, he manages not to follow it up with _no duh,_ though the tone rather fills it in without his help.

“Fucking tourist bullshit,” Billy mutters, loud enough for Steve to hear. And they’re off again—“I can’t see California, I can’t see my dumb tourist bullshit, what the fuck am I _supposed_ to want, Billy?” “How about something _real,_ Harrington, had you thought of that?” “You didn’t even want to come on this trip, why do you even care what we do—“

“I JUST THOUGHT YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW,” Robin projects loud enough to be heard over Billy, Steve, and George Michael together, enough that two of the three shut up, “that we passed a sign ten minutes ago that said ‘Welcome to Utah’. So you might want to double-check the map—“

Whatever she was going to say next, whatever response Steve was preparing, is made suddenly moot by a soft but insistent chime from the car. He whips his attention to the instrument cluster, makes a sound that might be a jagged moan or might be a “no-no-no- _no-no-no”_ as he hits the brake, pulls the car off to the side of the road. Kills the engine. 

The sudden silence is punctuated by a _thump_ as Steve drops his forehead onto the steering wheel and leaves it there.

A couple of cars whiz by, supremely unconcerned. 

Billy starts laughing. “What’s the matter, pretty boy? You get your engine all hot and bothered?”

“Shut up.” Steve’s voice is only a little muffled by the steering wheel. “Lots of people’s engines overheat in the desert.”

“Yeah, whatever happened to _one and three-quarter tons of precision German engineering?_ Because if this had happened in the Camaro I could’ve cracked an egg in the radiator, but unless you see a BMW dealership I’d say we’re pretty fucked—“

Realizing that the chances of a double homicide are, like the temperature in the car, increasing exponentially each minute, Robin lets herself out. Opens the driver’s-side door, ignoring both Steve’s look of surprise and the petulant chime from the car. Presses the trunk-release button. Silently thanks her past self, profusely, for stowing a couple jugs of water in the trunk before they left Hawkins.

“Robin?” Steve’s followed her outside, stands off to one side of the trunk as she drinks from her canteen. “Is everything okay?” She’s downing nearly the whole thing in one go, enough that her belly feels uncomfortably sloshy—at least it’s a discomfort that’s not caused by Steve’s hurt-puppy tone. She lowers the canteen, belches a little, pours the last of it over her head. “What’s the matter?”

She dives into the trunk, not looking at him. “Aside from having to listen to you two argue about nothing all goddamn day?” Digs out one of the jugs of water. Carefully, she unscrews the cap on the water jug again, pouring it into the canteen with all the precision of a chemist mixing up a batch of plastic explosive. “Aside from our taking a wrong turn and ending up hours away from our destination? Aside from the car breaking down in the middle of nowhere?” Without spilling a drop, she finishes filling the canteen, sets the jug down again. Screws one lid on, then the other. Only then does she turn to stare Steve in his big dumb face. “Aside from the fact that my _best friend_ is planning to move to California and leave me high and dry in dumbfuck Hawkins, Indiana?”

Steve’s eyes go wide, and he glances over at Billy, visible through the car window. “Keep your voice down,” he hisses. “I haven’t asked him yet. He’s not ready.”

“I don’t _care_ when he’s ready, or when you’re ready, or whether the entire world is ready. You can wait until fucking Led Zeppelin gets back together for all I care. What bothers me is that apparently you don’t give a shit about _us.”_ She motions to the two of them as she straps on the newly heavy canteen. “I thought you were my best friend, Steve. We literally saved the world together. And you’re going to leave all that behind the minute your _boyfriend_ crooks his finger?” She slams the lid of the trunk, hard enough to make Steve jump back. “You two can’t even go five minutes without having an argument, why the fuck do you think you can live together?” 

“I was going to ask you to come with us.“

"That doesn't mean—" Robin's brain catches up with her mouth, draws her up short. “Wait. What?”

“To California.” Steve bites his lip. “It’s why I asked you to come along on this trip. I thought maybe—maybe if we all saw it together, if we liked it there better—if we fit in—” Steve’s shifting weight from one foot to the other, looking at the car, at the horizon, at almost anything other than Robin. “You don't fit in, in Hawkins,” he says, the words all tumbling out, each nearly on top of the next. "Billy doesn't fit in there either, he never did. And lately I'm starting to feel like I don't, either. Not because I'm not king anymore or whatever, but because Hawkins is small. It's comfortable because it's small, and to some people, that's reassuring, but I'm not one of those people, not anymore. Not after—"  
  
“—after the Upside Down.” The words feel raw in Robin’s throat. Of course Steve is growing. Wanting to see more of the world. Why shouldn't he?

The question is, why isn't _she?_ She should be elated. Should be jumping at the chance to go somewhere, _live_ somewhere, that isn't Hawkins. Somewhere where people like her exist, openly and visibly—

_—when you're visible, you're a target—_

She imagines it for a moment, or tries to. Nerdy little Robin Buckley, who grew up in Hawkins but never quite fit there, skipping town. Running off with the two biggest jocks in their graduating class. Not to New York, or Northampton, or wherever it was that awkward nebbishy lesbians went to find their fortune, but to southern California, home of Hollywood and surf culture and valley girls and sunshine. A Woody Allen character plucked from her film and tossed into a John Hughes flick. Except John Hughes never made movies about queer kids—

The knot in her chest tightens once more. No. There's no point.

“Look,” she says, quieter, shoving a hand into her damp hair, hoping Steve doesn’t notice how it’s shaking. “I’m going for help. You two finish your argument, or pull your dicks out and measure them, or whatever the hell it’s going to take. Just…figure it out before I get back.” She backs away, towards the road. “There's water in the trunk, drink lots of it. Stay in the shade. I’ll be back in a while, okay?”

And with that, she turns on her heel. Shoves down the mental image of Steve’s face, hurt and bereft. And walks away. _They're adults,_ she tells herself, then adds, _well, technically. They can work their shit out. They'll be okay for a few hours._

She hopes to God that she's right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cracking an egg into the radiator is a legit fix if the issue is a small leak, as per MacGuyver and Mythbusters both. However, even if it works, you've now got egg in your radiator to deal with, so it's safe to say that Billy's full of shit.


	8. warszawa

Robin walks.

And walks. 

Cars whiz by occasionally, but she doesn’t bother trying to flag one down. The jittery energy shooting down her legs propels her forward; it’s all she can do to force herself not to break into a run. She needs to conserve energy, she reminds herself; she doesn’t know how far it is to the next town. She only has the one water canteen.

Half an hour or so later, a cloud blocks out the sun. The relief—of her skin, of the landscape around her, of the very air—is palpable; for all that it’s still hot, the temperature is far more bearable without the constant barrage of solar energy. She feels her shoulders relax a little, as if a weight has been lifted from them. The energy’s starting to work itself out; she’s settled into a moderately fast pace. Robin tries not to imagine herself as one of the moms in Hawkins, power-walking around the early-morning neighborhood in a neon tracksuit. 

She suspects the BMW’s long out of sight by now, though she refuses to turn and look. One foot in front of the other—sooner or later there’ll be a town, hopefully with a mechanic. Occasional sips from the canteen. Steve is a jerk sometimes, and thoughtless, and yeah, sometimes a little stupid. _Whish. Whish_. Cars pass, one after the other, a small pack headed west. Yeah, maybe she's never quite fit in Hawkins, but she'd never fit in California either—she's not a surfer girl, not some counterculture hippie or punk, not even a cool bookstore owner. She's just that weird Robin Buckley, band geek and music nerd and maybe-sometimes-friend to the ex-Kings of Hawkins. _Fwhoom._ A semi-truck zooms past, not even slowing. This walk only feels endless—she has to get somewhere. Eventually.

It’s when she hears the crack of thunder that she looks up, realizes how it’s become almost twilight-dark. Thunderheads are looming in front of her, dark and foreboding; as she watches, lightning flashes from somewhere in the depths, eerily localized blue-white flickers, filtered by the grey clouds. 

“I thought this was supposed to be the desert,” she mutters to herself, walking a little more quickly. She glances around, but the terrain is unhelpful—no trees (not that sitting under a tree in a lightning storm is a great idea, even she knows that), no convenient overhangs or caves, little in the way of high ground. The wind is blowing harder now, almost directly into her face; she can see a solid grey mist of rain coming closer.

Well. This might as well happen, too.

The storm hits with a ferocity that leaves even she, a veteran of Midwestern thunderboomers, completely breathless. Within seconds her hair and clothes are soaked; within a minute the bone-dry ditch to the right of the road has become a lively creek. The thunder and lightning are going for all they’re worth, arguing with a vigor that feels all too familiar, of late. The wind whips through, alternating from cold to warm and back to cold, and she shivers, something that five minutes ago she could barely have imagined doing.

She’s still walking, though her pace has slowed somewhat in the face of the wind; she sets her jaw, keeps moving forward with grim determination. She can barely see where she’s going, but the shoulder line is visible; as long as she keeps following it, sooner or later—

The shoulder line is visible because something’s lighting it up. She turns—a car has pulled up, its approach drowned out by the fury of the storm. From behind the frantic motion of the windshield wipers, the driver beckons at her.

 _Hawkins’ most disappointing child prodigy disappeared today somewhere along a highway on the Utah border,_ Robin hears the local newscaster filling in—the way this day is going, it would just figure. But if it’s between near-certain death by drowning or electrocution, and possible future death by serial killer…

It’s slightly reassuring when she opens the door and discovers the driver is a woman, not that much bigger than she is. She’s not young, but she’s different from the PTA moms Robin’s used to seeing at the video store—something about her well-broken-in jeans and black t-shirt, or her close-cropped dark hair, or the way she sits with her knees spread, clearly comfortable in her space. 

Or it could be the way she leans over and says “Hey, kid, if you ain’t gettin’ in, can you close the door? Only drying out wet upholstery is a pain in the ass.”

“Sorry—“ Robin half-gulps the word, sits herself down, and pulls the door shut. Tries to think of something to say in response that doesn’t sound completely boneheaded. Fails. “Uh. Thanks,” she says.

“No sweat.” The woman puts the car in gear, nudges it back onto the road. “I’m gonna assume you’re the one with the two boys in the fancy car?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m _with_ them.” It comes out sounding tired. Robin searches for the anger that was so pervasive an hour ago, but it seems to have vanished—washed away by the rain, maybe. 

“What, did one of them dump you?” The sandpaper-dry tone is in stark contrast to the weather outside.

“God no.” Robin shudders, or maybe shivers. “They’re just...both dinguses.”

“I’ve known few boys that age that aren’t,” the woman responds, but she seems to relax a little. Robin looks over at her, but her eyes are on the road, poker face solid. “I’m Reno, by the way.”

“Robs.” The nickname slips out—something about not giving a stranger your full name, or maybe Robin’s just more exhausted than she’d realized. “Are there any good mechanics in the next town?”

“As it happens, there’s me. I found your friends a bit ago, told 'em I’d go grab my van and head back. Hopefully they'll be amenable to interruption.” Robin blinks, trying to interpret that comment, but either she’s too tired or Reno’s too opaque, or both. She watches the wipers as they slosh back and forth across the windshield. Beneath the drum of the rain, the whir of the wipers, the thrum of the engine, there's something playing on the speakers—there's a drumbeat, maybe a snippet of harmonica—but it's too low to make out entirely.

"So what brings you three out this direction? Last I checked there weren't any happening nightlife spots."

"Good old-fashioned—" Robin almost says _stupidity_ , changes course at the last second. "—human error. My friend wanted to see Four Corners and took a wrong turn."

Reno chuckles at that. "Well, you're not missing much, if it helps. Dusty little tourist trap with a dusty little marker. Saw it myself a couple years back."

"I believe it." Robin tries to think of something to say. Settles for practicalities. "How far away are we?"

"Half an hour or so. A little less, now that the rain's letting up." 

To Robin's surprise, the rain is doing just that— already quieter, the raindrops individual _splats_ rather than a gushing torrent. “Are thunderstorms out here usually over this quickly?”

“In the desert? Yeah.” Reno chuckles a little. “Monsoons usually start in July. I guess you’re just lucky.”

“Yeah. Lucky.” Robin considers wringing out her hair onto the upholstery, but decides not to antagonize her benefactor. She leans forward instead, peering through the windshield; the clouds are thinning, and a moment later, the sun peeks out. Reno turns off the wipers. Robin can hear the stereo better now; it's switched to something synth-heavy and minor key, moody and bleak but not unbeautiful. “What's the music?”

“Bowie. Almost ten years ago, now."

"Hunh." Robin sits back, listens. "I'd never have guessed. It's much less chaotic than I expect from him."

Reno gives a little snort. "If you expect anything from Bowie you're going to be disappointed. The man's never been one to do the same thing twice. But I take your meaning." She takes a water bottle from a cupholder, sips from it, listening. "This one always feels to me like the morning after a particularly terrible bender. Like, you've done everything you can to run away from whatever it is that's eating you—downed the pills, drunk the booze, smoked the weed, been up all night dancing or fucking or just running through the streets. And you find yourself somewhere gritty and industrial, nothing but hard grey asphalt and rusty metal all around, the hangover kicking in, wondering why you even bother...and then the sun starts to come up, a bit at a time. Maybe catches on the rust, lights it up a little. And even though everything around you's still empty and desolate, there's that little piece of possibility."

Robin's not sure what to say to that—isn't sure comment is necessary—so she just listens. Feels the flute, like new sunshine, soft in amidst the darker synth chords of concrete and night. "Like a rebirth," she says, after a moment.

“Yeah," Reno says, a smile slowly spreading over her face. "He reinvents himself every year or two, it seems like, but—here we get to see the reinvention firsthand."

"Maybe I should listen to more Bowie." 

"Everyone should listen to more Bowie," Reno deadpans. "It could save the world." Robin wonders whether she's joking, decides against asking. "So," she continues, cheerfully enough, "Which dingus dragged you along on this trip? Mullet or Nike Swoosh?”

Robin has to smile. “Steve. The dark haired one. My—best friend.” Robin swallows against that tightness in her throat, wonders if the words are still true. “It was his big idea, take his friend to California for a concert. Cheer him up.”

Reno makes a sort of hum, deep in her throat. “He must’ve really wanted to impress that blond boy.”

“Yeah. Well, I don’t think Billy was all that impressed, really.” Robin shakes her head. “They’ve done nothing but argue the whole way here. Not that he and I have been much better,” she admits, wincing internally at the bald truth of it. 

Reno gives a short chuckle. "Still figuring yourselves out, I take it."

"Yeah." Robin sighs, looks out the window. "Something like that. We all graduated a year ago, and then life took...a couple of turns. And we're supposed to be thinking about our future, but it's hard enough just...trying to figure out where we fit. If we fit anywhere." Billy's voice haunts her. _Queer people don't exist in Hawkins—_ "Billy and I don't really know each other that well. But Steve likes him, so—" She raises her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

“Ahh.” 

The sound is far too knowing, and puts Robin’s hackles up. “Look, Steve’s my best friend, okay? And I’m his. Or I thought I was. But lately he’s been all Billy-this and Billy-that, and okay, I get it, they’re—“ She stops herself before blurting out something indiscreet. “They’re friends too. Except…” 

“You’re getting left behind?"

"I guess." Robin bites back a surge of annoyance at the pat assessment. "I just want him to be happy."

This time, Reno does scoff. “Of course you do. You’re never going to be happy, so he might as well be, right?” It’s Robin’s turn to send her a sharp glance, at which she laughs. “I can smell that brand of self-pity from fifty paces." She settles back a little. "It ever occur to you that maybe he's just as scared of losing you as you are of losing him?"

Robin opens her mouth to argue—and then thinks on that. She'd always assumed that Steve would be fine without her, but—she remembers, with a pang, the stricken expression he'd had when she joked about only seeing him on holidays. Remembers the hurt in his voice, on the steps in Colorado. Feels the thread of fear vibrating in her solar plexus—but rather than shy away, she sits with it, traces it back to the snarled knot in her heart. Wonders if Steve doesn't have a similar one. If, maybe, even Billy does. "I think...we're all scared," she says, feels her chest thrum in acknowledgement of this tangled truth. 

"Well, the future's a scary thing, that's a fact. Especially when you don't seem to fit in anywhere."

"Thanks," Robin says, the sarcasm a relief after the brutal honesty of the past few minutes.

"Something to consider." Reno either takes no notice of her tone, or doesn't comment on it. "When you don't fit in? There's nobody to tell you what your life should look like. And that's terrifying. But." She pauses a moment, as if considering her words, then shrugs. "When you don't fit in? There's nobody _can_ tell you what your life should look like. Which means you get to decide for yourself. That's the joy of chaos. You can reinvent yourself as many times as you need to."

Robin chews on that for a moment. "In a way, that's almost worse. Since if you end up unhappy, you don't have anyone else to blame."

Reno cackles with laughter. "You're right on that front. But let me tell you—you'd be _amazed_ how many people are happy to sit around and be miserable, so long as they've got somebody to blame for it. We don't get that excuse." She shakes her head a bit, smiling. "I made my share of mistakes, I’m not gonna pretend I didn’t. And God knows the world begrudged me every inch of space I carved for myself. But here’s the thing.” She smiles a little, out through the windshield. “I fought that fight, at first out of sheer cussedness and spite. And then I met someone special. And suddenly it was like I had a _reason_ to fight, where before it just seemed…hopeless. You follow?”

Robin considers, opts once more for honesty. “I’m not sure.”

“Fair enough, I guess. There's a reason I'm not a preacher.“ Reno’s quiet a moment more, and her tone turns reflective. “Just...keep it in mind. It's your loved ones, the ones who stick by you, who really make it all worthwhile. Whoever they end up being." She considers for a moment, then nods, as if satisfied. “Anyway, now I have my own garage, and my special friend runs the office. We’ve been partners for twenty years. Everyone in town knows us.” 

Robin feels the prickling somewhere in her mid-back—not wariness, exactly, but the sense of something left out between the words, a gap whose size and shape Robin can envision, or near enough. A gap that echoes the one she only occasionally acknowledges exists in her own heart.

“What’s your friend’s name?” she asks.

Reno’s smile grows almost as sunny as the road ahead of them. “Karen.” 

*

Van obtained and driven back, water pump belt replaced, and token payment accepted, Reno departs—but not before pressing the cassette tape of _Low_ into Robin's hand. Robin watches from the driver's seat as her van pulls away, mulling over their conversation for a moment before she turns on the map light, opens the atlas.

“Well, we're not going to make it to Four Corners today.” She traces from the approximate location Reno had pointed out on the map. “I can head in that direction, and we can look for a motel." She turns, looks at Steve in the backseat, at Billy half-asleep, head on Steve's shoulder. "Try for it tomorrow.”

“Nah.” Steve shifts a little bit, gives Billy a little more support. Whatever they said to each other while she was gone, something certainly seems to have changed. The energy between them has a different quality; simultaneously sleepy and charged. “Let’s skip it. We’re headed towards Vegas anyway, seems silly to backtrack.” He smiles, almost—bashful. “It’s getting late. I’d like to find someplace to sleep.” He turns his head towards Billy. "That work for you?"

"Sure." Billy's baritone seems especially low, and Steve smiles a little. His hand drifts up to touch something on his chest.

Billy’s medal is hanging there, against the buttons of his polo shirt.

Robin nods. Opens her satchel of cassette tapes, adds _Low_ to the mix. Roots around a bit, finds the album she wants, puts it in the tape player. Turns off the map light. Moves her focus out to the horizon.

“Well, then. Here's to three queer kids and the future," she says, putting the BMW into gear, and something loosens in her chest as the opening chords to "Don't Stop Believin'" limn the road ahead of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just doing my part to advance the cause of More Stories With Jett Reno In Them. (We may not know for _sure_ that her far-flung-future-fictional counterpart is a Bowie fan, but 1986-era Jett Reno 100% is.)


	9. for a smile they can share the night

Robin dreams, in bits and fragments. Images, sounds, memories. Karen, bespectacled and beautiful, brings her a towel while Reno rummages through the garage, looking for her tools. _You’ve got to fight,_ her voice echoes, and Robin frowns, trying to remember if that was something she’d actually said. _Make the space the world won’t give you._ Then she’s seeing Steve’s face, looking just like it did when she returned—joyful, relieved, a little flushed, his eyes flicking over to Billy at odd moments. Sees Billy, looking at Steve with a sort of hushed wonder and awe; is surprised to realize that the tight pangs in her chest are gone, that there’s room there now for light, for happiness—

Reno is finishing changing the belt, turns to her, hands her the keys. “Turn her on, let’s hear how she sings.” But when Robin looks down, she’s holding the wrong sort of key entirely, something heavy and wrought-iron—she hears piano music, someone picking out the strains of “Fur Elise,” sounding just like she did when she first was learning—she laughs. _What key does it sing in?_ —she looks up—

Candles scatter across the closed lid of a grand piano, wax dripping across its surface, sealing away the delicate mechanisms—but a few have fallen over, flames perilously close to the glossy finish. The room is large and dark, more of a greenhouse than a room, the walls paneled in glass; plants trail over tables and trellises, and the air is rich with the swampy loamy smell of growing things. She looks through the wall before her, sees an open field, stars glittering in the sky; as she watches, one falls, then another, then another, their tails leaving rainbow streaks behind. 

The piano’s not playing “Fur Elise,” she realizes; the treble line isn't individual notes, but chords. The melody is on the bass line, tripping up and down the lowest E-major scale, supported by the inverted thirds on the right hand—she turns to look, and the girl from Red Rocks is there, long dark hair void-black in the half-light, dark eyes laughing in the flickering light from the candles. She opens her mouth like she's going to sing—

 _No._ Robin shakes her head. _You’re just going to turn into Tammy._ But she doesn’t struggle when the girl stands, comes over, catches her hand—they're running along a corridor—it’s dark, lit only by candles in tiny sconces—Robin can hear her giggle, almost as melodic as her singing. She runs, wary of catching her feet on the uneven flagstones, desperate to keep up—

She’s running, but at the same time, she can feel the stiff mattress of her motel bed. Their room is dark in a way few motels get at night—the parking lot lights on this side must be burned out—and quiet, the sort of deep midnight-desert-quiet that makes you wonder if the rest of the planet disappeared while you were asleep.

She clutches at the dream-fragments, tries to roll them into a cocoon around her mind—the pleasantly rounded figure of the girl ahead of her, the candlelight silhouetting line of her neck—the sound of her breath as they run, as Robin dashes, catches up to her, presses her up against the wall. She smells like geraniums, lemony-sweet, like fresh-mown grass and spicy wood. Her lips part in a gasp as Robin presses her face against her neck, breathing her in; she nuzzles the spot behind her ear, presses her lips to warm dusky skin, lets her teeth catch on an earlobe—she hears a small moan, followed by a _shhh_ —

Robin’s hands are slipping down, over curved flesh, her thumb running over the soft catch of a nipple. The girl’s breath hitches, her skin supple beneath Robin’s, and she’s undoing Robin’s jeans, slipping one hand down to where she’s wet and slick and swollen. Robin swallows a cry, feels her chest heave, kisses the girl’s forehead, her nose, her lips—rolls the nipple between her fingers, is rewarded by parted lips, dark eyelashes fluttering down—clever fingers slipping inside of her—

“Please,” she hears, barely breathed, unsure who it's coming from. There’s warm breath against her ear. Something warm and liquid is building in her hips, and she bites her lip, buries herself in soft skin and dark curls and geraniums and the little cries that’re coming faster and she _wants_ , oh god, urgent and thick and real in a way she’s never let herself want before, wasn’t even certain that she _could—_

Robin gasps awake, sweaty and disheveled and trembling, unable to tell if the panting is coming from her or from the next bed over, unable for a moment to tell if she’s even in bed, or floating somewhere above it. Carefully, she slows her breath, lets her body relax incrementally into the mattress. Waits for the wobbly feeling in her muscles to subside, for the wisps and tatters of the dream to blow away. 

But as she sinks back into sleep, they seem to settle over her, soft and sweet as fresh-plucked flower petals. A sense of wonder seeps in, suffusing that newly-unfurled space in her heart, though whether it’s at what the new day will bring, or at this new person she’s becoming, she couldn’t say; she shivers, once, and settles back into sleep, and dreams.


	10. but when I see you out and about it's such a crime

Vegas is both everything and nothing like Robin anticipated.

It’s absolutely every bit as tacky as she expected, even from the passenger seat of the BMW—skyscraper-high neon signs, entire buildings covered in marquee-style lights, fountains and classical-inspired statuary competing with geodesic domes and palm trees and Art Deco architectural flourishes. Billboards are everywhere, of course—on the walls of shops and casinos, on poles high above the traffic, even driven on trucks going up and down the boulevard. At a stoplight, Robin leans forward, pushes the button to open the sunroof, grabs the camera, and stands, putting her head and shoulders through. The three-hundred-and-sixty degree view is simultaneously overwhelming and exhilarating—Vegas might be tacky, but somehow the unrivaled commitment of it raises the place to the level of art. It's downright impossible to see it for the first time without feeling _something._ It's also nearly impossible to frame any one particular landmark without getting three others in the frame, but she does her best.

Her favorite display, she decides, is the giant fancy LED board outside Caesars Palace, largely because the messages it runs are so at odds with their surroundings. MONEY CREATES TASTE seems on-brand, maybe, but PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT is more than a little jarring, and LACK OF CHARISMA CAN BE FATAL just feels ominous. 

Robin pulls herself back into the car, points them out. “Do you think they're an advertisement of some sort? Or an artistic statement?” 

“In this place? I'm pretty sure they're the same thing." Billy's voice comes from the backseat, laughing. "I kinda like it, actually. This town knows what it's about.” He turns to Steve. “So, what’s the plan? We gonna find a motel?”

Steve smiles. “Actually, I swiped one of my father’s credit cards for just such an occasion.” The light turns green, and he flicks on the blinker, turns in to the driveway for Caesars Palace. “Given how he runs around on my mother all the time, a charge for a casino hotel will hardly be out of place.”

“Much as I appreciate your dedication to your parents' marital harmony,” Robin observes, “won’t the hotel notice that the name on the credit card is wrong?” 

“How lucky for me that my father saw fit to saddle me with his name,” Steve returns, easy breezy. “The least he can do in return is put us up for a couple nights.”

There's an undertone to the words, something minor-key and bitter, but before Robin can respond Billy is talking again. “Hell yeah. Time to eat, drink, and be merry.”

Robin raises an eyebrow at his enthusiasm. "Finally find a place worth road-tripping for?"

Billy only grins, showing teeth. “I've been waiting my whole life for this. Let’s go live it up.”

*

As it happens, their “basic rooms” have minibars, bathtubs big enough to drown in, an eye-watering Pepto-Bismol-and-mint color scheme, and a stellar view of the Strip and its mega-size billboards. (“I bet that’s a hell of a show,” Steve had remarked, looking at the white tigers snarling directly into their windows. “It’s Vegas. If it’s not a hell of a show, you don’t last long,” Billy had pointed out.) Robin, having left the boys in their room, flops back on the king-size bed, bounces a little. Admires the glitter-speckled popcorn ceiling. 

Not bad, for a misfit from Hawkins. Maybe there's something to this whole "reinvent yourself" idea.

She's in the midst of a mental debate over whether she wants to call room service or try out the tub first, when she hears a knock at the adjoining door. “Robin?”

“I’m decent,” Robin says, then, for the sake of tradition—“Or at least, I’m dressed.”

Steve comes through. “Hey,” he says. “Billy went to stretch his legs.”

Robin lifts her head. “Hi,” she says. “He couldn't stretch his legs in the room? These beds are humongous.”

“No kidding. I’m pretty sure you could play regulation football on them.” Steve comes over and flops down himself, rolls until he’s lying perpendicular to her, resting his head on her thigh. “Or have a hell of an orgy.”

“Maybe I can catch a few showgirls after work, show ‘em a good time. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure and lock the door.” 

"What, no invitation?" Robin can hear Steve's pout. "I'm beginning to think we're not really friends."

"Yeah. About that." Robin feels a sinking in her gut, but presses on. "I'm sorry that I've been mean. That I—made you feel stupid. You're not. A dingus, definitely. Sometimes a dumbass. But no more than any of us are." It's easier to say the words to the ceiling, though her mind has no trouble throwing up an image of Steve's expression as he made the accusation, cool and callous and, underneath, hurt and afraid. "I guess...I thought you were looking for an out. Like I was just your friend because it was convenient, and eventually you'd run off with Billy and meet cooler people." It hurts to admit, this part of her that expected the worst of someone who'd never given her any reason to.

To her surprise, he doesn't shrug it off. Instead, he sits up, turns. Meets her eyes.

"Robin, you're one of the coolest people I know."

She sits up, just so she can shove him in the shoulder. "Stop it. I'm trying to be honest."

"I'm _being_ honest. You're smart, and you've got all kinds of cool music, and you don't give a damn what anybody thinks, you just always just go do your own thing." Goddamn those earnest eyes, Robin thinks, as Steve continues. "You're always going to be my best friend."

"I guess we're stuck with each other, then." Robin scoots back to sit up against the terrible pink velveteen headboard. Steve flops back down again, and she ruffles his hair. "So what's on your mind?"

“Nothing much, really. I guess…” Steve trails off, in that adorably uncertain way of his when he can’t figure out how to address the elephant in the room. 

Robin takes a moment to enjoy the familiar-but-perpetually-entertaining sight of Steve Harrington looking a little uncomfortable. “Yes?”

“I…guess I am gay. A little.”

Robin has to laugh at that. “Dingus,” she says, affectionately. “Yeah, it was sorta hard to miss last night.”

He rolls his eyes up to meet hers, cheeks pinking. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I was. Mostly.” She smiles a little, remembering her dream. “It's okay. I’m happy for you.” And she realizes, as she says it, that it's true. 

“Are you sure? Because I know you weren’t really sure about Billy for a while.” He blows air out through his lips, in a way that makes him sound three times his age. “I’m honestly not really sure about him.”

Robin thinks about Billy, in his torn jeans and wifebeaters. Thinks about the pendant she'd never seen him without, until it appeared around Steve's neck. Thinks about his sweet, if misguided, attempt to protect Steve. "I'm still getting to know him," she says, slowly. "But it's clear he’s pretty gone on you.”

“Are you sure? I mean, maybe he just feels bad because I took him on this trip. Or he feels sorry for me. Or something.” Steve rubs one hand over his eyes. “Goddamn it. I sound like a teenage girl.”

“I resemble that remark.” Robin leans forward a little, sinks her fingers into his hair, massaging his scalp, which has the entertaining side effect of making his hair even fluffier. “Look. I know he’s prickly and standoffish—“

“—yeah, it’s like I have a _type,”_ Steve interjects, glancing at her meaningfully—

“—AND I know he’s hard to read sometimes,” Robin continues, regardless, “but remember. This is Billy. I’m pretty sure he’s not sucking your dick because he feels sorry for you.”

“Maybe not.” That blush again, way too adorable for his own good. “I guess…” He trails off again, staring up at the ceiling. “I guess it just feels too good to be true,” he says, quietly. “Like, I did everything wrong, but somehow I ended up here in Vegas, with my best friend and this guy I’ve had a crush on for ages, and we’re sleeping together—er, he and I are—“ his cheeks get pinker—“and it’s like, of course, this is the town for fantasies, why wouldn’t it all come true?” He looks over at her, his eyes tense. “But what happens when we leave in a couple of days? What happens when we’re on the way to San Diego again?”

“I guess that depends,” Robin says, slowly, thinking it over. “What kind of future are you imagining?” 

“You know, that’s the damnedest part. I don’t even know.” Steve shakes his head. “It’s weird, right? Like, with Nance, I could see it all in front of us. College. The wedding. The house. The kids.” A shrug, as if embarrassed. “It felt so real. So solid. Right up until…it wasn’t.”

Robin mulls that over. “Maybe…that was the fantasy. That certainty. The solidness of it.” She meets his eyes, sympathetic. “The idea that you knew exactly how things were going to go, more or less.” 

“But if that future wasn’t real, and I can’t even see this one, how do I know what it’s supposed to look like?” Steve’s eyes are huge and dark, looking distressingly close to tears. “How do I know if I’m doing it right?”

Robin smiles a little. “Well, are you happy?”

He laughs, a little, drops his gaze, as if bashful. “Right now? Yeah.”

“Seems like a good enough start.” She settles back against the headboard. "I know I'm, like, the last person to be telling you this, but...maybe you don't need to overthink it? Just go with things for a while."

"Yeah. Usually I'm good at that." Steve stares up at the ceiling for a moment. "It's just...scary, y'know? Not knowing." He slides his eyes over to meet hers. “Would you… maybe come with us?" Quieter now, almost plaintive. "If we moved?”

She quirks an eyebrow down at him. “Finally decided I’m ready, did you?”

He has the grace to look abashed. “I’m still figuring it out,” he says. “I guess we all are. But…you're my best friend. I don't want to imagine a future without you.”

 _There's nobody_ can _tell you what your life should look like._ Robin smiles a little. ”Well. Maybe it'll be a little less scary if we're all figuring it out together." Something occurs to her. "Did you finally ask Billy, then?"

“Not yet.”

Robin is trying to figure out how to craft her response when a sharp rap comes on the door. “Robin? Is Steve in there?”

“Yeah, come in," she calls. “We’re just testing out these ridiculous beds.”

“Damn, that does look comfy.” Billy, of course, makes a running jump, lands cross-legged on yet another plane of open bed space. “So I talked to the concierge,” he says, without preamble. “And you’re in luck. There was one row with three seats open tomorrow night.” He hands Steve an envelope. 

“Seats?” Steve opens the envelope, pulls out three periwinkle-colored printed tickets bearing the legend SIEGFRIED & ROY AT THE MIRAGE. “Billy—“ He sits up, looks at them as if Billy’s just put the keys to a vintage Corvette in his hand.

“They’re not front-row or anything,” Billy says, suddenly awkward. “But as dumb tourist stuff goes, it seems like it might not totally suck—“

Whatever he’s going to say next is cut off as Steve practically pounces on him, kissing him with a ferocity that (Robin suspects) will put the tigers in the show to shame. She lets it go on for a moment, then nudges them both with her foot. “Yeah, okay, I’m going to go take a bath, so…your room’s over there…”

Steve comes up for air just long enough to say “I love you,” pure and simple and uncomplicated, right into Billy’s eyes. He turns to Robin and grins, leaving Billy looking a little shell-shocked behind them. “Tigers!”

“Dinguses,” she says, fondly, and suspects he hears the translation beneath the words. _I told you so._ “Go make out on your own ridiculous bed. I’ll see you both tomorrow.”


	11. no better to be safe than sorry

_Robin Buckley looks damn good in a tux. Who would’ve thought._ Robin finishes combing her hair in the gold-framed mirror, lends forward to adjust her tie, checks her teeth for spinach. One point she has to give Vegas is the prevalence of proper powder rooms; there’s enough room for a several gaggles of friends to do their makeup. Or adjust their ties. 

Steve had declared that if they were going out on the town, they needed to be dressed for it; luckily there was no shortage of formalwear rental shops near the chapel district. To Robin’s surprise, they even had a small selection designed for women; she turns, admiring the way the cut shows off her butt. Distantly, she hears a flush from the next room over; she straightens, slips the comb into her pocket. Time to go find her seat—

“Oh!“ The word is half-breathed, startled. Robin catches an impression of a gold lamé minidress in the mirror, turns to see—oh god. It’s the girl. The one from Red Rocks, who’d sung with her. The Christine to her Stevie. The one who’d been in her dream, dusky hair and dark skin and—yes—the scent of geraniums. “Is it—” She looks every bit as flabbergasted to run into Robin here, her voice breathy with shock and wonder—”are you really—“

She has the most adorable British accent, and beautiful dusky skin, and hair even darker and thicker than Tammy Thompson’s. Her earrings are gold to match her dress, and she’s doing her clutch the service of fully justifying its name, looking at Robin in disbelief, in delight, like she’s a pop icon, someone she’d never expected to see in reality. Robin has the sudden, slip-sliding feeling of having stepped into the wrong reality—the rules have changed, the logic of the universe shifted, chaos threatens from every angle—

Then the girl smiles. Stretches out a hand. Snaps. Again. A rhythm, a beat, a structure for her dissonant thoughts, her jangling nerves. Their eyes meet.

“You put the boom-boom into my heart—you send my soul sky-high when your lovin' starts...”

Her soprano is clear, sweet, obviously trained—and that's as far as Robin gets before her brain shuts down entirely. Because this is Vegas, this is reinvention, this is the strange suspended sense of the future meeting the present—and if she's in charge of what her life looks like, she'll be damned if she's not going to grab on to this opportunity with both hands. She starts snapping along, sings the answering line—"Jitterbug into my brain—goes a-bang-bang-bang 'til my feet do the same..." And yeah, maybe her voice cracks a little, maybe her intonation's off—but it's recognizable, and the way the girl's face lights up in sheer delight is better than any polite recital audience she's ever had—

And they’re off, snapping and singing together. Robin’s never met anyone who could grin like that as they sang. But then, she’s never met anyone twice in different places thousands of miles from each other. Never met anyone who tripped through her dreams, ambushing her with the scent of spicy wood and lemongrass and flower petals. Never met anyone who looks at her like this, like she can sing, like she can fly, like she can make all the slot machines in Vegas pay out at once.

 _I was dreamin’, but I shoulda been with you instead—_ the girl raps her knuckles on a wooden cabinet twice in lieu of hitting the two lead-in chords—and then they’re into the chorus and Robin is doing a step-slide forward, half-dancing, half-moving just for the sake of this shaky, insistent energy that fills her—the girl moves, mirroring her, and Robin’s grateful that the song is burned into her brain, because frankly the lyrics are terrible, bad scansion and awkward phrasing, and she’s having trouble believing that this could be happening—things like this—things that could be from a movie—they don’t happen in real life. They definitely don’t happen to awkward nerdy band geeks from Hawkins who like girls a little too much—and yet, here, she’s here, they’re here, dancing together, feet moving together in time, movements not quite touching but almost— _you’re my lady, I’m your fool_ , and Robin takes her hand, spins her into a pirouette, the ridiculous lyrics transfigured into an earnest declaration by the moment. By their smiles. By the strange heightened nature of this place, this moment, their willingness to dive into the sheer fantasy of it—she pulls the girl close, leans back, feels the girl lean against her, trusting, ready to fall—

_I wanna hit that hiiiiiiiigh—_

It's out of Robin's range, so the girl carries the last line herself, Robin harmonizing. The note tails off, and Robin’s still inhaling lemongrass and sandalwood, immersed in this strange wonderful plane between dreams and reality.

Then they dissolve into giggles together, pulling apart. The girl puts her hands over her mouth, as if she can’t quite believe what they’ve just done.

A chime sounds, followed by a recorded voice. _Two minutes to showtime. Please take your seats._

“I’m Robin.” It’s all she can manage, breath squeezed out of her.

“Ginny,” the girl gasps back. Glances at the door, where the hubbub of the crowd has grown louder. Pulls her ticket stub and a pen out of her clutch. “Here—this is where I’m staying—“

“I’m leaving tomorrow. My friends and I are going to San Diego—“ She tries to think through what feels like a mind full of glitter and champagne bubbles. “Can I catch up with you tonight?”

She shakes her head. “I’ll be out late. But I can sneak away for a minute at breakfast before we leave for our flight—come kiss me goodbye?”

“I can try—” The hubbub is dying down. They’re out of time. 

Ginny steps forward, presses the stub into Robin’s hand. Stands on tiptoe, presses her lips to Robin’s, just briefly.

Just long enough, for one beautiful moment, for Robin to dive headfirst into in a breath of lemongrass, and geraniums, and sandalwood.

And then she’s gone, Robin left holding the slip of cardstock. _The Mirage, Room 1406, 5:00 AM—Ginny._

Left wondering if the rushing in her ears is all the stars in the sky, falling to Earth in rainbow streaks of light.


	12. blue in green

“No way,” Billy says, trailing his fingers along the adobe facade of the office building they’re walking past. His tie is loose around his neck, wispy curls escaping from their careful application of hairspray. They pass in front of a streetlight, and he's momentarily silhouetted—the easy stance, loose with the effects of the joint in his hand and the night out on the town they've just shared. The line of his jacket, draped carelessly over his back, two fingers hooked into the collar. The gold halo of his hair, moving as he shakes his head. “Did you see those puffy shirts? The feathers? The _glitter?”_ He takes a puff on the joint, and his laugh rattles around in his chest as he passes it to Robin. “No way are those men straight. I’ll bet you a hundred bucks they’re making out with each other the moment the curtains close.”

“Yeah, but did you see the _tigers_ though?” Steve’s the only one of them still fully wearing his jacket and tie, which surprises Robin—he'd gone hard on the drinks Billy had bought him, on the weed, but the thrill of the show and the surroundings seem to be buoying him. Or maybe carrying him, a current that might become a riptide—“The way that one just jumped up on its hind legs and danced—I was sure it was going to maul his chest—“

Robin finishes the joint, careful not to get any ash on the jacket draped over her arm. Relaxes into the pleasant fizz of marijuana in her bloodstream. She has to hand it to Billy’s instincts in finding a dealer—this is good shit, way better than they get in Hawkins. “I was more impressed by the line of girls dancing,” she admits. “That kind of synchronization is way harder than it looks, especially in heels.” She leans back against a darkened window—probably a travel agency, judging by the ads in the window. _Newlyweds: Book Your Dream Honeymoon!_ , reads one. Another, _Around the World Concert Tours!!!_ She looks away before the overload of exclamation points makes her dizzy. Tilts her head. “Do y’all remember the way back to the hotel? ‘Cause I think I’m lost.”

Another laugh from Billy. “Easy. Just look for the most eye-searing combination of lights, and walk in that direction. When some dude pounces on you with a flyer, you’ll know you’re getting close.” He puts on a thick Indian accent. “Titties! Straight to your door!”

Robin laughs. “At least you get the interesting ones. I just get the ticket-hawkers. Or creepy dudes claiming they’ll get me a role in a show.” She shudders. “You’d think the tux would’ve kept some of them at bay.”

“Nah. Androgyny’s hot right now.” Billy drapes his jacket over one shoulder, shoves his hands in his pockets. Looks out over the Strip, half a mile or so away. "I wonder if that's why so many people in showbiz are gay. We make great performers, because most of us do it all the time."

Steve takes the spot next to Robin, leaning against the window, lets his head fall over onto her should. For a moment, they just exist, letting the relative peace of the nighttime world surround them, here in this quieter side street. “You could totally do a one-woman show if you wanted," he says, nudging Robin. " _Lesbian Life in Hawkins, Indiana._ ”

“Yeah, if I wanted to depress the fuck out of the audience.” Robin nudges him back with her shoulder, feels his head bounce a little. “What show would you put on?”

She can _hear_ the way he's smiling over at Billy. “Isn’t it obvious? _The Two Kings._ The audience would watch us compete for their attention, only to be confounded when it turned out we were together the whole time.” 

Robin snorts at that, though privately she thinks it’s actually not a half-bad idea. She glances over to ask Billy his opinion; but he’s standing a little apart from them, still looking out over the glitter of the Strip. “Billy? What would your show be?”

He seems to think about it for a moment. “I guess I could do seances,” he says. “Pretend to let dead assholes speak through me. Tell their loved ones how much they miss them, or whatever.” He smiles for a moment. “Who knows? Maybe I'd meet a real one. Learn some juicy family secrets.”

Robin raises her eyebrows at that. "I would've thought you'd have had enough experience with possession," she says, before realizing that this probably isn't a great subject for what's supposed to be a fun night out.

The smile flickers, but Billy's tone is still loose and easy. "Maybe so." He turns back to look over the lights again. "Maybe I'd do a high-wire act. I've always liked the feeling of being high up. When I was a kid, I used to tell myself that if I could just get high up enough, I could...I don't even know. Escape. Learn to fly maybe." A chuckle, low, perhaps a little wistful. "Never was brave enough to actually try it."

“Yeah,” Robin says. “I remember when I was in grade school, sometimes I’d walk to this park after school, get on the swingset and just…swing as high as I could. And close my eyes.” She remembers the sense of motion, freedom constrained, balanced against the predictability of the back-and-forth rhythm. “I used to imagine that if I did it long enough, I’d turn into a bird and just fly away. Wouldn’t have to go home and cook. Wouldn’t have to sit through awkward dinner conversation with my mother. Wouldn’t have to go to school any more. I could just…be free.” She laughs, remembering. “Except that thought was even more terrifying.”

"Freedom is tough." Steve stands up straight, though he looks a little woozy. “I remember when I hit high school, when my parents started going on more and more trips. And at first I was like, hell yeah, I can throw parties. I can eat pizza for dinner every night. I can jump into the pool in November with all my clothes on.” He pushes off the wall, jumps forward, making a _ploossshh_ noise as his feet hit the cement. He stumbles, almost falls over the curb, though Billy catches his arm at the last minute. “But eventually, it was like, fuckit, what’s the point? No matter how many parties I threw, I was still _alone._ The only thing that was different was I was alone in wet clothes. Or alone and had to clean vomit out of the living room carpet.” He shivers a little. “Sometimes I think that's just my fate. No matter what I do, sooner or later everyone'll leave.”

Billy tugs him back safely to the middle of the sidewalk. “You’re going to be okay, pretty boy,” he says in an undertone, meeting Steve’s eyes. Robin senses something passing between them, some coded message Billy’s trying to send—but Steve only shakes his head, half-stubborn, half-drunk.

“I think my mother just didn’t know what to do with me,” Robin says, thoughtful. “She spent her whole life following the rules. Learned to cook, learned to keep house, got married, had me. And then it turned out that her husband was a liar and a cheat.” She shrugs. “When I was younger, she was always super strict with me—why I couldn’t stay out late, why I had to learn to cook, why I had to keep up my music lessons, whatever. But as I got older, it was like…she gradually gave up. Like, the rules hadn’t worked out for her, so why should she make me follow them, especially when I was…odd.”

Billy looks over at her, his tone amused, maybe a little condescending. “You wish you’d had more rules?”

"No. Not exactly.” Robin thinks on it a moment. Remembers the conversation before she left, where she'd been expecting pushback, some kind of warning about running off with boys who had reputations like Harrington's and Hargrove's. Remembers the way her mother had, instead, sort of vaguely smiled and wished her a good trip, like Robin wasn't the sort of daughter who was worth any more effort than that. “It’s more like…I wish she’d cared enough to set them.”

Billy only shakes his head. “My whole life’s been nothing but rules,” he says. “They were never fair, constantly changing—really it was just my asshole father pulling an asshole power trip. Sometimes I felt like the only reason I existed was to fight them. I was always angry—I had to be, just to keep up the energy…” He trails off for a moment, straightens. “I wonder if that’s why the Mind Flayer chose me. Because it could sense that anger. Sense how terrified I was, underneath.” 

Steve weaves a little over towards Robin, puts his arms around her. She slides an arm under his shoulders, supportive; Billy is back to looking out over the Strip. She plucks up her courage. “What was it like?” 

Billy turns to look at her, and there's a blankness in his expression that sends a twinge along Robin's spine. “You really want to know?”

“I do.” She stands a little straighter as Steve murmurs nonsense syllables into her shoulder. 

Billy looks at her a moment longer. “Powerful,” he says.

“Thought ’twas controllin’ you,” Steve mumbles.

His eyes flick to Steve, then back to Robin; despite their being nearly of a height, for a moment, he seems to almost _loom_ in the shadows. “It was. But it was the only thing that _could.”_ One more beat, then Billy sucks in a breath, seems to come back to himself. “And now, here I am. Nothing controlling me. Nothing to be angry with." His voice gets quiet. "It's like...I don't even know who I am, anymore."

“Billy.” Steve launches himself off of Robin, toddles unsteadily towards his boyfriend, hangs off his neck. Makes an effort, raises his head to look at Billy. “You don’ hafta be ‘fraid ‘nymore.” 

“Maybe not.” Billy pulls him close. “Come on, lightweight. Let’s get you into bed.”


	13. butterflies all tied up

Robin’s too wound up to sleep—the ticket stub sits innocently on the tastefully overwrought bedside table, drawing her eyes to it whenever she can but she dozes, halfway dreaming, her stomach in knots as she waits for the alarm to go off. A swirl of images, sounds, words slip through her mind, all full of portentious meaning, but they stubbornly refuse to cohere into a solid narrative. She has the feel of floating, of flying, but rather than a cityscape or countryside beneath her, there’s words, memories, flashes. A whole flock of butterflies, caught in a vortex, swirling, colors flashing even as they’re torn apart. Tammy Thompson’s bangle bracelets, chiming together as she moves, her dark soft hair pulled to one side in a low ponytail. _It’s this place,_ she says again, only now she’s Reno, hands working deftly under the hood of the BMW. _Here’s your problem_ , she says pulling out the broken water pump belt, only it’s not the belt, it’s a knot of curly blond hair, matted with grease, one hank hanging down bloody—

“Robin!” Steve’s shaking her shoulder, and she blinks her eyes open. Feels a sudden rush of adrenaline—she’s slept through the alarm, missed Ginny. She glances at the clock by the bed; it says 4:18. She groans, half in relief, half at the early hour. “’Nother nightmare? Can’t you get your new boyfriend to sing you a lullaby?”

“Robin, I asked him." Steve's eyes are wide and panicked; it takes her a moment to make sense of the words. "Last night. I asked him to move to California with me. With us."

Robin fights to marshal her thoughts. "You finally asked Billy? What'd he say?"

"He laughed at me. Said I was drunk." Steve is up now, pacing. "But I insisted, told him I'd been meaning to ask him for weeks, and he just came over and—Robin, I was drunk, but I wasn't _that_ drunk, you should've seen his face. Like I'd told him his dog had died. If he had a dog." Steve flaps a hand, dismissing that line of thought. "He came over and laid down and held me, and when I wouldn't let it go he was all _we'll talk about it in the morning when you're sober_." Steve's hand flies up, runs through his already-messy hair. "And then I woke up and he was gone. I thought he was in the bathroom maybe, but I didn't hear anything, and when I sat up there wasn't any sign—"

 _You’re going to be okay, pretty boy._ Robin hears Billy’s voice, the previous night. “Shit,” she mutters, fighting the sinking feeling in her gut, fighting the muzziness that enshrouds her thoughts. She swings her legs over the side of the bed, turns on the lamp, starts pulling on her jeans. “Are his things still here?”

Steve crosses to the other room. “Yes,” he calls out a moment later, relief evident in his voice.

“Then he’s probably not hitching a ride back to Hawkins. Maybe he couldn’t sleep? Decided to go play the slots?”

“I can look.” Steve still sounds uncertain. 

“Tell you what,” Robin says, grabbing the first shirt that comes to hand—which turns out to be the dress shirt of her tux—over her camisole. Rather than futz with studs and cufflinks, she pulls the edges in to overlap and tucks it into her jeans, rolls up the sleeves to elbow height. “You go downstairs, see if he’s gone for an early breakfast or whatever. I’ll look for some hotel staff, ask if anyone’s seen him.”

“Okay,” Steve agrees. A moment later, he’s gone, and Robin takes a moment to sigh ungracefully and close her eyes, trying to rub sleep out of them. She’s never at her best early in the morning, and she has the disappointing crashing sense of being brought to reality early—she can’t remember the dream now, but she’d felt like she was flying—

_—if I could just get high enough, I could escape. Learn to fly maybe—_

Adrenaline burns the last of the cobwebs from her brain, as her eyes fly open, as her spine straightens, bolt upright. Billy’s sudden shift, from constant bickering to chill acceptance. The way he’d seemed so careless with his money, buying them show tickets and drinks and weed. She’d thought it was just that he was getting laid, but—

She checks the clock. 4:25. Her eyes catch on the periwinkle ticket stub, the messy handwriting. _Ginny._

She and Billy aren’t friends, not really. She could just…let him go. It’s his life, his decision—or she could meet Ginny briefly, kiss her goodbye like she promised, dash back—

Steve’s face, in the BMW that night. After Reno had left. When Robin had ordered the two of them into the backseat. The strange quiet that had settled between them, the way Steve’s fingers kept creeping up to touch Billy’s pendant against his chest. Steve’s face had been a little flushed, a little awed. Like he was suddenly seeing a whole range of possibilities, futures that he’d never dared dream of, before.

Like the three of them could be happy together.

Robin picks up the glass of water from the nightstand and chugs it. Sets it down. Sends Ginny a mental apology. 

She’s probably the least qualified person on Earth for this job. But—there’s no one else for it.

She pulls on her sneakers and heads out in search of the roof access.


	14. i was me but now he's gone

“Billy?”

The door swings to behind her, propped open by the cinderblock. It’s quiet, ominously so; this high up, there’s not even the chirp of night-bugs to break the silence. Only the slight whistle of a breeze sounds, air moving over some crenelation or other. The emergency light over the door makes a faint buzz; the roof itself is only faintly visible in the grey of the early-early morning light.

Robin’s gut sinks—either her hunch was wrong, and the door was just left propped open by a security guard on his smoke break, or else she’s too late—she steels herself to go looking for a commotion at ground level—

_Fwing._

The flick of a lighter, off to her right. She rounds the doorway, sees the flame, watches as it highlights his face for a moment, soft yellow against the near-black. He snaps the lid closed, and his face is thrown into shadow; still, the grey from the horizon is enough to limn his figure, sitting astride the parapet wall. 

She can just see his head turn to look at her. Realizes she knows him well enough to guess at his expression, the sardonic way one corner of his mouth is curling up. “Robs,” he acknowledges. Not amused, exactly, not wary, not welcoming, not warning. Not surprised. As if this meeting is just one more in a string of inevitabilities. "Come to get a picture? It'll be extra dramatic in a half-hour or so, with the sunrise and all."

"I didn't bring the camera." Robin keeps her voice casual. Waits. Lets him make the next move.

A moment later, the cigarette’s coal sketches a beckoning motion through the air. "You should come over." The coal brightens as he takes a drag; a moment later, his head turns, looking out over the wall. “The view’s something else.”

It’s only that moment that Robin realizes just how much she’s been running on adrenaline. The relief of having found him ( _alive_ ) hits her in a wave, hard enough to feel for a moment like the building is rocking beneath her. She lets out a breath that feels like she’s been holding it for the past half-hour. “That’s a hell of a reason to disappear on your friends at four in the morning.”

A shrug, barely discernible in the half-light. “My friends are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.”

Robin considers, for a moment, just pushing him off the roof herself and having done with it. Or replying with something equally snarky. Or just turning on her heel and leaving. Maybe she could still catch—but no. Much as she’s loath to admit it, Billy’s become her friend. Through chance and proximity rather than intent, perhaps, and—she thinks, taking in his apparent lack of concern as he drags—certainly one of the more infuriating friends she’s had. But still. 

But still.

She gives a silent sigh, moves to the edge of the roof and sits, facing him. One foot safely on the roof, the other dangling over the precipice. Sets her worries and her fears aside for a moment, and looks out over the touted view. Feels, to her surprise, a strange sense of power, suspended on this threshold between fascination and foreboding.

Because Billy’s wasn't bullshitting her. Most of the Strip’s lights are still going, but the pre-dawn light—a hair brighter now—softens them, mixes them a little, neon paints blended into a pastel watercolor. Even the traffic along Las Vegas Boulevard is muted, a few cars waiting at stoplights, the occasional taxi marquee or mobile billboard. The updraft whistles, lifts her hair, pleasantly warm in the cool morning air.

Billy’s quiet, looking out over the same view with a distant expression. He's changed back into his usual clothes, though his medal is missing. Robin takes a moment to ponder, cycles through a mental list of conversational overtures. _You know we’re not supposed to be up here—_ well, obviously. _So, you want to tell me what you’re doing up here?—_ too confrontational. _Might as well_ _jump—_ she suppresses a thoroughly badly-timed giggle as the keyboard riff plays in her head. No.

She opts for the truth. “Steve was pretty frantic when he woke up and you were gone.” 

Billy makes a _hnh_ noise around his cigarette, a half-chuckle cut off before it could be entirely birthed. “Don’t worry. He’ll find someone else to suck his dick soon enough.”

Robin feels a flicker of annoyance—no, not just a flicker, a flame, spreading, warming beneath her skin. “That’s a pretty cold thing to say about the boy who loves you.”

He takes the cigarette out of his mouth, gestures with it. “He _thinks_ he loves me. He’ll find out soon enough it’s not true.”

“What, because you’re abandoning him?” Robin doesn’t even try to keep her tone casual. It’s an accusation, and she’s not hiding it.

Billy looks her in the eye, then, and there it is, the expression that haunts her nightmares, that sets her heart pounding—something bone-deep and dead, awful in its flat certainty. “Because there’s nothing there to love,” he says. 

She swallows against the sudden emptiness, where her belly's dropped down to somewhere around ground level. “He seems to think there is.”

Billy makes a _psshh_ noise, strangely sophomoric in the moment. “He thinks the world is his fairy-tale playground. He’s the white knight of his own story, here to scoop us up onto his charger and save us from ourselves. And lucky for him, the world’s happy to play along. He’s rich, he’s white, he’s mostly straight.” He looks out over the view again. “Nobody’s ever going to tell him otherwise.” 

A moment of quiet. The sky is lightening, a dark grey color. Leaden.

“You’re a hero, too,” Robin says, quietly.

“Bullshit. Haven’t you ever read a story?” He gestures to himself, to his battered wifebeater and ripped jeans. “At best, I’m the reformed villain. Here to show how _good_ the hero is. Here to be his reward, his happily-ever-after.” He jabs at Robin with the cigarette. “And _you’re_ the snarky sidekick. Safely shielded from having to make any decisions for yourself.” He takes another lungful of smoke, blows it out over the updraft, watches it disappear; his hands tremble slightly. “I’ve been hollowed out,” he says, a little quieter. “Scraped clean, like a pumpkin someone’s going to carve.” His eyes flick over to meet hers, and they’re not flat anymore—there’s a fire in them, something hot-burning and explosive. “And I’m damned if I’m going to be anyone else's jack-o-lantern.”

Uncomfortable as it is, Robin holds his gaze. Tucks away the truth in his words for later mulling-over. Waits a beat, two, long enough to make her point, even if she’s not quite sure what it is. _You’re an asshole,_ perhaps. Or _if you’re going to do this, you’re leaving something behind._

Or, maybe, simply: _If I'm stuck with you, you're stuck with me too.  
_

She reaches over and takes the remains of the cigarette out of Billy’s fingers. Drags. Blows it out in the updraft. “You _were_ the reformed villain,” she says. “I was the sidekick. But that story’s over. Last I checked, ‘happily-ever-after’ was an ending, not a beginning.”

Billy watches her, wary. “So?”

“So.” She takes the last drag and flicks the butt over the side. Looks out, for a moment; the slightest hint of blush color tinges the horizon. “Let’s say you’re writing the next story. Where do you want to go?”

He blows air through his nostrils, sounding for a moment like a grumpy dog. But he thinks about it. “Not San Diego, that’s for sure. Living there’s like being stuck in a time loop. Nothing ever changes.”

Robin raises her eyes. “Worse than Hawkins?”

He snorts. “At least in Hawkins, the weather has seasons.”

 _Plus, y’know, the whole monster thing,_ Robin thinks, but decides maybe now isn’t the time. “What would you do, then?”

“What is this, Career Day?” But Billy sighs, leans back a little. “Fuck if I know. I used to like working on the Camaro. Maybe I’d see if I could get a job as a mechanic. Rebuild old cars on the side."

Robin nods. "I have a cousin who does that. The money's not bad."

"Yeah, it'd be great. At least until word got around that I was queer.” He swings his leg over the parapet, gets up, stalks a little way away. “That’s just it," he says, turning back to face Robin. "Anything I do, any future I build, all it takes is one person, one rumor, and _pfft.”_ He makes a motion with his hand, fingers all flicking open at once, like a puffball exploding. “The world doesn’t want people like me.”

“People like us,” Robin says. No self-pity, no anger. Just simple fact.

Billy looks chagrined for a moment, then shrugs, short and sharp. “Whatever.”

Robin disregards his ill grace, thinks it over. _Suddenly it was like I had a reason to fight._ Reno’s voice echoes in her mind. 

“Maybe…we’re coming at this all wrong,” she says, after a moment. “Maybe stability isn’t the point.”

A snort as he crosses his arms. “Most of the world seems to want it.”

“Most of the world is perfectly content to sit around and be miserable, so long as they've got someone to blame for it.” Robin raises her eyebrows at Billy, suppresses a smile when he makes a disgusted noise and rolls his eyes. “Maybe…” She lets the words come to her, slowly, feeling out the shape of them as they appear in her mind. As they seem to set themselves against dark laughing eyes, fingers snapping in a hotel powder room. “Maybe it's better to make things a little more unusual for each other. A little more fairy-tale. To find space to make each other happy, even if it’s just for a few minutes. That we make that magic that’s missing from our lives, for each other.” She shrugs. “And if we find some stability along the way, so much the better…but even if we don’t, we’ll go out on our own terms.”

Billy’s face is stony, but his eyes are turned inward. “Maybe,” he says. Lifts his chin, looks out once more over the horizon, where orange is joining the pink, brightening faster with every minute. "Steve keeps hounding me to tell him about what life was like in San Diego," he says. "And I guess I sorta get it, he's never lived anywhere else. But...a lot of shit went down there. I was miserable, and a pretty terrible person. I'd really rather do things to make him happy now." Something in his expression softens; Robin suspects she's not alone in picturing Steve's face when Billy had gotten the Siegfried & Roy tickets. His arms drop. "I wish I could do something really magical for him," he says, softly. 

"Honestly? Just going to the concert with him is probably pretty magical, so far as he's concerned. The boy's head over heels for you."

Billy shakes his head, but he's almost smiling. "Dumbass."

"Love maketh dumbasses of us all." 

"I guess I can deal with going back for a night. There's worse things than Van Halen."

Robin laughs. "Hell yeah. Just think. We could be going to see—" She stops. Blinks. “How much money do you have left?”

Billy shrugs. “Not much. A hundred maybe. Why?”

An image flashes in her head— _Around The World Concert Tours!!!_ —overlaid with figures, mental math. She’ll need to find out when the travel agency opens, make some calls—“Do you have the Van Halen tickets? They’re sold out, right?”

“Yeah, we could probably get another hundred for them…” Billy’s eyes widen. “Wait.”

She swings her own leg over the parapet, looks up at him. There’s still a hollow in the pit of her stomach, but now it feels full of light and air. Excitement. Anticipation. Possibility.

A new story, begun.

“Have you ever thought about going to London?”

“No. No fucking way.” Billy crosses his arms, sets his feet in a wide stance. “I am not giving up Van Halen to go see fucking—”

“Aww, I thought you didn’t even _care_ about Van Halen,” Robin says, smile going wicked. “What’d you call them? Teenybopper metal?”

“Better than _actual_ teenybopper bullshit—”

He’s too late. Robin’s already trekking across the roof now, back towards the door, and Billy following reluctantly in her wake. “I’ve got a couple hundred left, I was saving it for getting people gifts in California.”

“That’s still not enough to get the three of us to London.” Billy says, though his certainty is waning in the face of the absolute mania that’s gripped Robin.

“Maybe not.” She turns, gives him a smile almost as bright as the horizon behind him. But it’s exactly enough to do something ridiculous and impractical in the name of love.”

“Which is?”

 _I’m flying back to London tomorrow._ Ginny’s gone from Robin’s life, by now, but her presence lives on in the champagne bubbles and glitter that fill her chest. In the irrepressible joy that propels her forward. In the way that she _wants,_ and it feels so much better than she ever dreamed. 

She turns to Billy, her grin as bright as the rays of sun that are just peeking over the horizon.

“We’re gonna put it all on red.”


	15. higher and higher straight up we'll climb

Even Robin has to admit, George Michael is a hell of a performer.

He's been strutting and dancing and moving for nearly an hour, somehow managing to keep a crowd over twice the size of Hawkins' entire population engaged. Not just engaged—enthralled, _enchanted._ Despite that fringed leather jacket—which can't be anything but warm—despite the leftover heat of the day and the focus of the crowd, he doesn't show any signs of wilting. He's launched into a dance that's more than a little suggestive—a lot of pelvic thrusts—Robin glances over at Steve, laughs at the stunned and delighted and frankly horny look on his face. Watches as Billy's arms tighten around him, possessive, or perhaps promising.

Technically, there are seats, but none of them are sitting—they’re standing in front, dancing in the aisles, singing and clapping and cheering and screaming. More than twice the population of Hawkins is in this space, celebrating this band, heartbreak and joy and love and anger spilling out in rivers, in waves, a flood threatening to sweep everything along with it. 

They're having the time of their lives.

Admittedly, it’s hard not to when you’re standing next to Steve Harrington in his preppiest polo shirt, watching his rapturous face as he sings every lyric and chants every chant, completely in his element. When you’re watching Billy Hargrove, who could pass for a fan in his black jeans and too-small tee, clear out anybody who gets too close to his boyfriend with little more than a scowl and a flex of his muscles. When you know him well enough to know just how much fun he’s having, despite his refusal to sing along. When you know the three of you will ride the Tube back to your hastily-booked hotel room, after, spend the night drinking and making plans for your future—plans that’ll be changed at a moment’s notice, a script you’ll be forced to throw out, chords you’ll have to improvise over—but that’s okay, because you know that whatever shape your story takes, it’s not going to be sad or lonely—it’s going to be ambitious and surprising and awe-inspiring—

"Happy Christmas!" George shouts, and the band breaks into the opening chords to "Last Christmas", midsummer weather notwithstanding. Robin laughs and shakes her head, piles her hair on top of her head in a loose sweaty bun. She mimes to Steve and Billy that she's going to get drinks. Her throat is starting to rasp, with the singing or the shouting or even the dancing, who knows. Steve's looking misty-eyed, snuggling back into Billy's arms right there in the open—Robin wonders if they're likely to get any looks, decides that Billy's scowl is probably a strong enough deterrent to anybody likely to do more than look. She turns and climbs up through the bleachers, avoiding the people dancing in the aisles, humming along because if there's one thing Wham! can do, it's write a damn catchy hook—

She's been in line for a couple of minutes, entertaining herself with people-watching, when she catches a hint—just a whiff, overlaying the smells of tens of thousands of people yelling and moving about—geraniums. And lemongrass. 

Her head whips around practically of its own accord. There's so many people around; even if she isn't imagining things, it'd be hopeless—too much, to expect to find each other in this crowd—

The song ends, and the crowd goes every bit as wild for it as they have for the rest of the show. But Robin isn't clapping, she's scanning the rows before her, searching for—yes, there, four rows up and a little to the right—the other figure in the crowd that isn't clapping or cheering or jumping up and down. The other face that looks every bit as delightedly dumbstruck as she is.

"Ginny!" Robin waves, starts to make her way through the dancers, practically bounds up each riser. Ginny's squeezing out of her row, coming down to meet her—someone gets between them, and Robin almost panics as her line of sight is obscured—no, they can't lose each other again— _Jitterbug_ , comes out of the speakers, and Robin starts laughing, hysterical, overjoyed, because of course this is how they would find each other, lose each other, find each other again—this goddamn infuriatingly catchy _song_ —

_You put the boom-boom into my heart..._

And there it is. Ginny's soprano, singing along with the giant image of George Michael on the TVs. Robin picks it up on the next line, sings for all she's worth, parting the crowd, her head turning this way, then that—and there she is, barely more than in impression of dark hair and laughing eyes before she's practically hurled herself into Robin's arms, until Robin is drowning in her scent, until she can't hold her up any longer, has to put her down—only for Ginny to clutch her hands, for the two of them to dance together, with each other, with over seventy thousand other young people whose stories have yet to be written. They sing, triumphant, the music giving form to the chaos around them, and Robin trusts it, trusts Ginny, trusts the crowd—trusts this magic they've all created, that it will buoy them far into the unknown future.


End file.
